Investigating The Effects Of Soil Management In A Long Term Experiment In Southern Italy: Preliminary Results For The Assessment Of The Soil Hydraulic Properties Using The Beerkan Estimation Of Soil Transfer Parameter (BEST) Methodology

In the last few years, more farmers are moving towards a conservative agriculture based on a set of practices such as zero tillage (or no-tillage), reduced tillage (such as minimum tillage), mulching and cover crops, aimed to prevent soil degradation, to improve water conservation and to enhance soil nitrogen through legumes in rural landascapes (Godfray et al., 2010). Soil hydraulic properties, i.e. the hydraulic conductivity function (HCF) and the water retention curve (WRC), are widely used to quantify the effect of soil management on soil physical and hydraulic properties and therefore, to evaluate the sustainability of the cultivation systems regarding these aspects. In particular, soil system behaviour should be monitored both during the transition period from conventional to conservative management and in the long-term period, thus considering multiyear experiments and repeated measures in space and time. However, soil hydraulic properties measurements are costly and time-consuming (AnguloJaramillo et al., 1997); consequently, simple, rapid, cheap and accurate methodologies should be applied, such as the Beerkan Estimation of Soil Transfer parameters (BEST) procedure (Lassabatère et al., 2006), that allows for the simultaneous determination of HCF and WRC. This paper presents the preliminary results of a study aimed at investigating the short- and long-term impacts of soil management and crops on soil physical and hydraulic properties. The dataset will be used also to investigate the spatial variability of key soil variables in a typical Mediterrean agro-environment.