Effect of vegetation removal on soil erosion and bank stability in agricultural drainage ditches
Avilés, Daniel; Wesström, Ingrid; Joel, AbrahamAbstract
Maintenance of agricultural drainage ditches can be difficult to optimize if farmers have no guidelines on where to target their maintenance efforts. A main concern is whether ditch banks will experience soil erosion or mass movement (failure). In order to help identify sites that are more likely to experience soil erosion and/or mass movement, soil susceptibility to detachment was assessed in this study using a cohesive strength meter (CSM) and measurements of shear strength in unsaturated direct shear tests. The results showed that soil roots play an important role in stabilizing ditch banks against mass movement and in reducing the rate of soil detachment. A positive stabilizing effect was detected by CSM and confirmed by shear strength measurements. The conclusion is that native vegetation should be maintained on ditch banks, instead of being removed during maintenance work as is currently the case
Keywords
bank erosion; roots density; soil shear strength; ditch status evaluation; ditch managementPublished in
Land2020, volume: 9, number: 11, article number: 441
Authors' information
Sustainable Development Goals
SDG15 Life on land
SDG2 Zero hunger
SDG12 Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns
UKÄ Subject classification
Environmental Sciences related to Agriculture and Land-use
Soil Science
Environmental Management
Publication Identifiers
DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/land9110441
URI (permanent link to this page)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/109487