Land Use and Erosional Effects on Two Ohio Alfisols:

An on-farm study was conducted on 4 sites (A, B, C and D) in Ohio to compare soil properties of the surface horizon of an uncultivated and non-eroded (NE) wooded soil with those of cultivated and eroded soils for the same series. Cultivated soil comprised of slight (S), moderate (M), severely (SV) eroded phases on upper landscape position and depositional (DP) phase on the foot sloves. There were sienificant differences in soil moverties of surface horizon of the non-cultivated location (wooded site) compared with the cultivated locations. Mean soil buk density of the NE sites was 1.03 Mg/m3 compared with 1.40 Mg/m3 for cultivated land. Among different erosion phases on cultivated land the highest mean bulk density of 1.45 Mg/m3 was observed on phases and the lowest bulk density of 1.33 Mg/m3 on DP phases. Mean total porosity was 64.9% for NE sites compared with that of 46.7% for all cultivated sites. Saturated hydraulic conductivity (K,) was highly variable and did not follow a consistent trend with regard to erosional phases. In general, however, laboratory measured K, was significantly higher for NE sites than cultivated sites, e.g., 24.6 cm/hr vs. 5.29 c&. Available water capacity (AWC) decreased with increasing severity of erosion among cultivated phases. The mean AWC was 0.33 (volumetric fraction) for NE, 0.23 for DP, 0.22 for S, 0.20 for M, and 0.19 for SV phase. Percentage water stable aggregation (WSA) and mean weight diamter (MWD) were generally high for NE and SV phases. Mean soil organic carbon (SOC) was 3.47% for NE, 1.13% for S, 0.98% for M, 0.97% for SV, and 1.45% for DP phases. Mean pH was 6.5 for NE, 6.4 for S, 6.1 for M, 7.2 for SV and 6.8 for DP phase. The available P was significantly lower on NE compare with cultivated land for sites A and C. The mean P content for soil at site A was 16 kg/ha for NE, 41 kg/ha for S, 46 kg/ha for M, 32 kg/ha for SV, and 59 kg/ha for DP phase. mean CEC was 12 cmol/kg for NE, 11 for S, 12 for M, 16 for SV, and 12 for DP phase.