105(4)_str39

ISSN 1392-3196 / e-ISSN 2335-8947
Zemdirbyste-Agriculture, vol. 105, No. 4 (2018), p. 307–314
DOI  10.13080/z-a.2018.105.039

The impact of tillage intensity and meteorological conditions on soil temperature, moisture content and CO₂ efflux in maize and spring barley cultivation

Vaclovas BOGUŽAS, Aušra SINKEVIČIENĖ, Kęstutis ROMANECKAS, Vaida STEPONAVIČIENĖ, Lina SKINULIENĖ, Lina Marija BUTKEVIČIENĖ

Abstract

With a worldwide increase in the use of sustainable tillage systems, it is important to ascertain their long-term effects on soil properties and greenhouse gas emissions. However, there are not many long-term experiments of this type, and they are conducted in very different climatic and soil conditions. To fill a knowledge gap in this field of study, a long-term, stationary field experiment was set up at Aleksandras Stulginskis University’s Experimental Station (54°52ʹ57 N lat., 23°50ʹ51 E long.) in 1988. The current paper presents the experimental data from the 2015–2016 period. The soil of the experimental site is Epieutric Endocalcaric Endogleyic Planosol (PL.gln-can-eup) with a texture of loam on heavy loam. The topsoil layer’s characteristics are as follows: pH_KCL 6.6–7.0, available phosphorus (P₂O₅) content 131.1–206.7 mg kg^-1, available potassium (K₂O) content 72.0–126.9 mg kg^-1, humus content 1.68%. This study set out to investigate the effects of long-term application of different tillage systems and meteorological conditions on soil temperature, moisture content and soil surface carbon dioxide (CO₂) efflux in the stands of maize and spring barley. The experiment included the following primary tillage methods differing in intensity: 1) conventional ploughing (CP) at a 23–25 cm depth (control treatment), 2) shallow ploughing (SP) at a depth of 12–15 cm, 3) deep cultivation (DC) at a depth of 23–25 cm, 4) shallow cultivation (SC) at a depth of 12–15 cm and 5) no tillage (NT) (direct drilling).

The findings of the study suggest that the soil surface CO₂ efflux depended on the amount of rainfall during the crop growing season. In a dry year 2016, the soil CO₂ efflux was lower than that in a wet year, the differences between the tillage treatments were more distinct, with the least flux being from the NT treatment. No significant differences among the tillage treatments were determined in a wet year 2015. The soil temperature depended on the tillage intensity and the weather conditions during the crop growing season. A lower soil temperature was recorded in the reduced tillage treatments compared with conventional tillage treatments. A negative strong correlation was established between the soil surface CO₂ efflux and soil temperature (y = 13.93867 + 0.303x; r = −0.96, P < 0.05). The tillage methods of different intensity did not have significant effect on the moisture content in the soil surface layer; however, in a dry year, the highest moisture content was determined in the no-tillage treatment, while in a wet year the differences were negligible.

Key words: maize, soil moisture, soil surface CO₂ efflux, soil temperature, spring barley, tillage.

Full text: 105_4_str39.pdf