A Study of change in selected soil hydraulic properties with land use change
Student name: Mr Girish Rama Varma
Guide: Dr Sudipta Chatterjee
Year of completion: 2015
Host Organisation: Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bangalore
Supervisor (Host Organisation): Dr Jagdish Krishnaswamy
Abstract: With a large scale increase in population that the world is observing comes increased change of land use to suit peoples` needs. Such changes can cause major changes in many environmental factors. One major factor not highly noticed is the soil below and its properties. Changes in soil properties can affect the environment around detrimentally mainly through the variation it can bring in important soil hydraulic properties like infiltration and moisture retention. Pair wise comparison of different land uses was done from three different sites. The land uses compared were woodland and grassland from two study different study areas and two fallow lands with a reserve forest patch from another study area. Soil physical properties like bulk density, porosity and particle size distribution as well organic matter was tested for all the soils to observe the differences obtained in the results. Particle size distribution showed all the soils belonging in the same texture classification. Hence the variation in properties can be attributed largely to the land use. Woodland soil was found to have greater amount of organic matter compared to grassland in both the study area though porosity was not found to be particularly high between the two land uses in one of the study areas. More samples have to be collected to get a better idea on this variation. The third comparison gave a higher value for organic matter in the Reserve forest patch compared to the fallow lands though no clear trend could be observed in case of porosity. This could be due to the tillage that the fallow lands have seen during cultivation in the past.
