Managing Global Resources for a Secure Future

2017 Annual Meeting | Oct. 22-25 | Tampa, FL

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242-2 Drought Resilience in Agricultural Systems: Interplay of Cover Cropping and Drip Irrigation to Improve Soil Aggregation and Hydro-Physical Properties.

See more from this Division: SSSA Division: Soil Physics and Hydrology
See more from this Session: Applying Soil Physics and Hydrology to Soil Health

Tuesday, October 24, 2017: 1:45 PM
Tampa Convention Center, Room 21

Nathaniel Alexander Bogie1, Asmeret Asefaw Berhe2, Michael V Schaefer3, Claudia Avila4, Macon Abernathy5, Eric A. Dubinsky6, Alison R. Marklein6, Daniel Rath7, Eoin Brodie6, Sanjai J Parikh8, William J Riley6, Kate M. Scow9, Margaret S Torn10, Peter Nico11, Samantha C. Ying12 and Teamrat Ghezzehei13, (1)California, UC Merced, Berkeley, CA
(2)University of California-Merced, Merced, CA
(3)Environmental Science, University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA
(4)Environmental Sciences, University of California Riverside, Riverside, CA
(5)Environmental Toxicology, University of California-Riverside, Riverside, CA
(6)Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA
(7)University of California, Davis, Davis, CA
(8)Department of Land Air and Water Resources, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA
(9)1 Shields Avenue, University of California-Davis, Davis, CA
(10)Berkeley Lab, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley, Berkeley, CA
(11)One Cyclotron Road, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Berkeley, CA
(12)900 University Ave, UC Riverside, Riverside, CA
(13)School of Natural Sciences, University of California-Merced, Merced, CA
Audio File Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
As the recent California drought brought into sharp focus, agriculture in the Western United States faces a great challenge of maintaining production in the face of an unpredictable water supply. The structure and function of soil, its microbiome, and the carbon contained within can play a critical role in improving or maintaining drought resilience in agricultural systems. This project, which is a multi-University of California Collaboration, along with Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) is an attempt to answer mechanistic questions about how agricultural practices (tillage, cover-cropping) and irrigation (furrow, micro-irrigation) interact to affect soil carbon dynamics and physical structure. We collected samples from the Rincon silty clay loam (fine, montmorillonitic, thermic Mollic Haploxeralf) soil at the Russell Ranch Sustainable Agriculture Facility in fields equipped with subsurface drip with cover crop (Australian bean, vetch, and bell bean), and non-cover crop treatments. Preliminary results from wet-sieving analysis indicate that in the 0-10 cm depth range there was a significantly higher fraction of small micro-aggregates (<53μm) in the cover crop than in the non-cover crop treatment, and a significantly higher fraction of macro-aggregates (250-2000μm) in the non-cover crop treatment than the cover crop. Additionally there was no significant difference in bulk density or porosity at the multi-centimeter scale down to a depth of 50 cm. Furthermore, we will present data on implication of changes in soil aggregation on water retention and hydraulic conductivity. Our results will help further our understanding of how soil structure changes in response to changes in cover crop under subsurface drip irrigation systems, and overall effect on soil structure of high-efficiency irrigation systems in California.

See more from this Division: SSSA Division: Soil Physics and Hydrology
See more from this Session: Applying Soil Physics and Hydrology to Soil Health

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