A Field-Scale Soil Erosion Study : An Example from a North Florida Farm

Lacking quality soil erosion field data has been a serious problem in soil erosion research because we haven’t had a proper field technology for common croplands. Recently, a novel soil erosion field technology has been developed and shown promising preliminary results of solving this problem. We applied the novel field technology to the 224 m field-scale soil erosion study in a peanut/cotton rotation cropland of North Florida. The results indicated that soil loss was only 0.4 % - 1.3 % of the sediments deposited inside the slope. The losses of the associated nutrients were at a much higher level of 2.6 % to 21.8 % of the depositions inside the slope. Previous sediment inside the slope was a major contributor to the soil and nutrient losses of a current runoff event. The methodology also determined soil erosion parameters such as delivery ratios of the bulk soil, silt and clay, organic matter, total kjeldahl nitrogen and total phosphorus, respectively. This study showed that the field technology can obtain additional soil erosion information that could advance our knowledge in soil conservation and sustainability research. The realistic field data obtained can be used for the verification and calibration of soil erosion models