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Soil Roughness Changes from Rainfall

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1987

Year

Abstract

ABSTRACT CHANGES in soil surface roughness were measured for three tillage systems following the application of a series of simulated rainstorms. Tillage systems were chisel, chisel + disking, and chisel + disking + harrowing. Rain with an intensity of 50 mm-h-i and an energy rate of 0.0275 kJ-m~2 per mm of water was applied in storms of 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 1.5, 3.0 and 6 h durations. Soil surface roughness was expressed by a parameter R which represented the effect of clod size and frequency. Roughness changes could be described by the function R = Cj + C2 exp( C3-r) where r is the cumulative rainfall. Autocorrelation analysis showed substantial variation in the spatial dependency of (a) the roughness parameter R among tillage systems and (b) the measured elevations on a transect following different rainstorm events.