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Titel |
Small scale variability of soil parameters in different land uses on the southern slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro |
VerfasserIn |
Christina Bogner, Anna Kühnel, Johannes Hepp, Bernd Huwe |
Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2016
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Medientyp |
Artikel
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Sprache |
en
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Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 18 (2016) |
Datensatznummer |
250128325
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Publikation (Nr.) |
EGU/EGU2016-8308.pdf |
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Zusammenfassung |
The Kilimanjaro region in Tanzania constitutes a particularity compared to other areas in the
country. Because enough water is available the population grows rapidly and large areas are
converted from natural ecosystems to agricultural areas. Therefore, the southern slopes of
Mt. Kilimanjaro encompass a complex mosaic of different land uses like coffee plantations,
maize, agroforestry or natural savannah. Coffee is an important cash crop in the region and is
owned mostly by large companies. In contrast, the agroforestry is a traditional way of
agriculture and has been sustained by the Chagga tribe for centuries. These so called
homegardens are organised as multi-level systems and contain a mixture of different
crops.
Correlations in soil and vegetation data may serve as indicators for crop and
management impacts associated to different types of land use. We hypothesize that Chagga
homegardens, for example, show a more pronounced spatial autocorrelation compared to
coffee plantations due to manifold above and belowground crop structures, whereas
the degree of anisotropy is assumed to be higher in the coffee sites due to linear
elements in management. Furthermore, we hypothesize that the overall diversity of soil
parameters in homegardens on a larger scale is higher, as individual owners manage
their field differently, whereas coffee plantation management often follows general
rules.
From these general hypotheses we derive two specific research questions: a) Are there
characteristic differences in the spatial organisation of soil physical parameters of
different land uses? b) Is there a recognizable relationship between vegetation structure
and soil physical parameters of topsoils? We measured soil physical parameters
in the topsoil (bulk density, stone content, texture, soil moisture and penetration
resistance). Additionally, we took spectra of soil samples with a portable VIS-NIR
spectrometer to determine C and N and measured leaf area index and troughfall as an
indicator of vegetation patterns. First results support our general hypotheses. In
the coffee plantation anisotropic variation of soil parameters clearly showed the
anthropogenic influence like compaction due to agricultural machinery. However, soil bulk
density and penetration resistance in the homegarden were also quite variable at the
sites. The larger variability of throughfall in the homegarden is reflected in the
patterns of soil moisture. Regarding the larger scale, where we compared different
homegardens and coffee plantations along the southern slope of the mountain, soil
parameters of the coffee plots were less diverse than those of the homegardens. |
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