Abstract
The hilly area of red soil in the central subtropical region of China has a long history of severe soil erosion due to its abundance of water, heat, and intense agricultural and forestry activities. The Sandshale red soil area is hot and rainy, the local land utilization rate and replanting index are high, and the soil easily weathers and erodes, resulting in infertile and sandy soils, extensive soil erosion and large erosion, with far-reaching impacts. In this study, the stability of soil aggregates was studied by the wet sieving method and Le Bissonais (LB) method in six land use patterns in the Sandshale red soil area, including natural forest (NF), Pinus massoniana (PM), Eucalyptus urophylla × E. grandis (EU), orchard (OR), wasteland (WL) and arable land (AL). The transport damage characteristics of the soil aggregates under concentrated water flow were analyzed by using the soil aggregates to simulate the soil surface roughness in the field using a steel scouring flume with a variable slope. The results showed that: (1) the total soil porosity of the natural forest was the highest, with 56.51% in A layer, which was 4.99% higher than the B layer, and the organic matter content ranged from 10.69 to 29.94 g.kg−1 and was highest in NF and lowest in AL; (2) the maximum mean weight diameter (MWD) obtained by the wet sieving method was 4.81 mm for natural forest, and the MWD was the lowest in OR and AL at 2.45–2.77 mm. The MWD measured by the LB method was also highest in NF and lowest in AL. The contents of Fed and Ald have a strong correlation with the stability parameters of soil aggregates; (3) the Wr/Wi results for the six land use patterns were NF>PM>EU> WL>OR>AL; the NF had the strongest soil aggregate stability, followed by WL, PM and EU, and AL and OR had the weakest; the stability of soil aggregates gradually weakened as the soil depth increased. Comprehensive analysis shows that forest land has high soil stability and obvious advantages in soil erosion resistance. Strengthening the construction of artificial forests can be an important means to reduce soil erosion in red soil hilly region.
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Acknowledgments
We thank the financial support for the research provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42107350), the Special Projects of the Central Government Guiding Local Science and Technology Development in China (Guike. ZY21195022) and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 42007055). We thanked LENG Nuan, LIU Zhi-fei, SU Zi-mei and WEI Li-tian for their contributions during the experiments.
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Wen Li-li: Investigatigation, Methodology, Data curation, Resources, Formal analysis, Software, Visualization, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing. Wang Jin-yue: Conceptualization, Visualization, Investigation, Supervision, Software. Deng Yu-song: Conceptualization, Methodology, Data curation, Supervision, Validation, Writing-review & editing. Duan Xiao-qian: Data curation, Funding acquisition, Writing-review & editing, Visualization, Supervision.
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Wen, Ll., Wang, Jy., Deng, Ys. et al. Fragmentation process of soil aggregates under concentrated water flow in red soil hilly region with different land use patterns. J. Mt. Sci. 20, 3233–3249 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-023-8154-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-023-8154-y