Soil Model: Tool to Demonstrate the Effect of Different Cropping Systems on Soil Conservation

The use of soil models is applied to disseminate the importance of soil cover in mitigating erosive processes. The objective of the present study was to compare the effect of different systems of soil cover on the losses of soil and water. For this, an experiment was carried out on soil models containing soil classified as Cambisol, at a slope of 7%. The treatments were maize cultivation more canola straw; canola straw; and uncovered soil. In the treatments that received canola straw, there was used 40 g of straw.pot-1, equivalent to approximately 7 t.ha-1. For the measurement of the soil and water loss, the infiltrated water and the surface water were collected, and the lost water and soil were quantified. It was possible to verify differences between the treatments in terms of soil losses due to surface erosion, being the treatment without soil cover with the highest soil loss, equivalent to approximately 60 kg soil.ha-1, while in the treatment of canola straw with maize crop there were no soil losses. There was a superficial loss of water in all treatments, and there was no difference between them.