03.12.2012 Views

SCHRIFTENREIHE Institut für Pflanzenernährung und Bodenkunde ...

SCHRIFTENREIHE Institut für Pflanzenernährung und Bodenkunde ...

SCHRIFTENREIHE Institut für Pflanzenernährung und Bodenkunde ...

SHOW MORE
SHOW LESS

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.

Chapter 7 General discussion and conclusions<br />

moisture. Conversely, our monitoring position can be considered as kind of<br />

location that can represent the field mean moisture content (i.e. representative<br />

position) since it also matched with measured water content in TSP. From this<br />

aspect, we set up a bridge connected the representative of monitoring and field<br />

mean value in term of temporal stability concept.<br />

Grazing effects on soil properties and functions (Chapters 2, 3 and 5)<br />

Grazing has an influence on soil hydraulic, thermal and mechanical properties<br />

and functions, predominantly in the upper layers (10-15 cm). Furthermore, those<br />

properties are interlinked with each other. For instance, the mechanical results<br />

revealed that grazing increased the precompression stress on the grazed sites<br />

(Krümmelbein et al., 2006), and further increased bulk density accompanied with<br />

changes in soil structure as indicated by Peth and Horn (2006). The structural<br />

change due to grazing is also reflected by a decrease of Ks, total- and macro-<br />

pore volume and an increase of meso-pore volume. This is in agreement with<br />

Villamil et al. (2001), who proofed a change of water retention characteristics by<br />

grazing in Argentina. Furthermore, grazing decreased hydraulic conductivity<br />

because of animals trampling as indicated by Wang and Ripley (1997).<br />

Therefore, we considered that heavy grazing particularly deteriorated soil<br />

physical and hydraulic properties, while moderate to light grazing was less<br />

harmful.<br />

Conversely, we also noticed that soil physical functions had recovered to<br />

some extent after being fenced for a long-term period (e.g. 25 yr in UG 79).<br />

Drewry et al. (2006) summarized that processes contributing to the natural<br />

recovery of physically degraded soil might include reduction of soil compaction<br />

(e.g. tillage, wheel-traffic compaction), earthworm burrowing, root penetration<br />

and decay, wetting and drying cycles, and freezing and thawing cycles (Drewry<br />

et al., 2006). Owing to exclusion of animal trampling, we mainly ascribed the soil<br />

recovery in the ungrazed sites to the regeneration of soil structure by root<br />

penetration and decay, wetting and drying cycles, and freezing and thawing<br />

cycles. In agreement with Proffitt et al. (1995), our results proofed that reduction<br />

141

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!