Restoring soil health to reduce irrigation demand and buffer the impacts of drought

Rebecca SCHNEIDER, Stephen MORREALE, Zhigang LI, Erin MENZIES PLUER, Kirsten KURTZ, Xilu NI, Cuiping WANG, Changxiao LI, Harold VAN ES

doi:10.15302/J-FASE-2020348

Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering (Sep 2020)

Restoring soil health to reduce irrigation demand and buffer the impacts of drought

Rebecca SCHNEIDER, Stephen MORREALE, Zhigang LI, Erin MENZIES PLUER, Kirsten KURTZ, Xilu NI, Cuiping WANG, Changxiao LI, Harold VAN ES

Affiliations

Rebecca SCHNEIDER, Stephen MORREALE, Zhigang LI, Erin MENZIES PLUER, Kirsten KURTZ, Xilu NI, Cuiping WANG, Changxiao LI, Harold VAN ES: 1. Department of Natural Resources, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY14853, USA;2. School of Agriculture, Ningxia University, Yinchuan 750021, China;3. Modeling and Spatial Analysis Lab, Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, N2L 3G1, Canada;4. Cornell Soil Health Laboratory, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY14853, USA;5. Breeding Base for State Key Laboratory of Land Degradation and Ecological Restoration of North-western China, Ningxia University, Yinchuan 750021, China;6. State Key Laboratory of the Seedling Bioengineering, Ningxia Forestry Institute, Yinchuan 750004, China;7. College of Life Sciences, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China;8. Department Soil and Crop Sciences, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY14853, USA

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15302/J-FASE-2020348
Journal volume & issue: Vol. 7, no. 3
pp. 339 – 346

Abstract

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Irrigation consumes three quarters of global water withdrawals each year. Strategies are needed to reduce irrigation water use, including increasing the efficiency of transfer methods and field application. Comprehensive restoration of soil health, specifically through organic matter amendments, can substantially reduce irrigation demand and increase crop yield. A program to restore severely degraded and desertified soils by incorporating coarse woodchips into the soil successfully increased rainfall capture and elevated soil moisture for several weeks between rainfall events at both Ningxia, north-west China and North Dakota, USA. With addition of fertilizer, woodchip incorporation further increased growth of wheat and alfalfa. Comprehensive soil health assessment of remnant grasslands was used to develop target reference soil profiles by which to guide restoration efforts. Given that most agricultural soils are degraded to some degree, soil health restoration can provide a powerful strategy toward achieving global food and water security.

drought|irrigation|restoration|soil health|woodchips

Published in Frontiers of Agricultural Science and Engineering

ISSN: 2095-7505 (Print); 2095-977X (Online)
Publisher: Higher Education Press
Country of publisher: China
LCC subjects: Agriculture: Agriculture (General)
Website: https://journal.hep.com.cn/fase

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