Impact of oak leaves mulching on evaporation reduction from bare soils

الملخص EN

There is a continual drive to conserve soil water, especially, in regions where water resources are limited.

Mulching is a commonly recommended practice to achieve this goal.

Therefore, a study was initiated with the objective of choosing the most effective oak leaves mulching thickness for soil water conservation in different textured soils.

Microlysimeters were packed with soils obtained from three sites and buried vertically in predrilled holes at Grdarasha site which is about 5 km to the southwest of Erbil city.

Before evaporation commencement, the soil water content was brought to field capacity and the soil surface was covered with oak leaves at thicknesses of 0, 1, 2.5, 5, 7.5 and 10 cm.

Thereafter, soil water evaporation was monitored by periodically weighing the microlysimeters for a period of about 6 weeks during the summer months.

The results indicated that three stages of evaporation can be recognized and there was a steady increase in evaporation suppression with increase in mulching thickness.

As a whole, there is no a systematic increase in cumulative evaporation due to an increase in clay content.

More than 99% of variation in evaporation due to variation in time was explained by a second degree polynomial model.