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ARS Home » Plains Area » Lubbock, Texas » Cropping Systems Research Laboratory » Wind Erosion and Water Conservation Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #399098
Research Project: Developing Strategies for Resilient and Sustainable Crop, Water, and Soil Management in Semi-Arid Environments

Location: Wind Erosion and Water Conservation Research

Title: Soil health within transitions from irrigation to dryland management

Author
item Acosta-Martinez, Veronica
item WEST, CHARLIE - Texas Tech University
item BHANDARI, KRISHNA - Texas Tech University
item Perez-Guzman, Lumarie

Submitted to: ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 10/18/2022
Publication Date: 11/6/2022
Citation: Acosta Martinez, V., West, C.P., Bhandari, K., Perez-Guzman, L. 2022. Soil health within transitions from irrigation to dryland management. ASA-CSSA-SSSA Annual Meeting Abstracts.

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: Current challenges to maintain soil health within the central and southern parts of the Ogallala aquifer (valuable water resource within eight Great Plains states) depend on managing declining water supplies for irrigation to maintain productivity and essential soil functions without pumping rates that exceed natural recharge. Growers are thus practicing a combination of converting some cropland from irrigation to dryland management including pasture and implementing water-conserving techniques such as deficit irrigation and subsurface drip systems. This transition management may reduce plant biomass productivity leading to decreases in soil organic matter (SOM) and altered soil microbial communities and their essential processes, thereby diminishing overall soil health. Our study assessed short-term changes in soil health indicators in two transition scenarios: (i) from high to low irrigation (center pivot to subsurface drip) or (ii) irrigation to dryland. There were declines in soil water content, K, Na, and organic C during the three years of this study. Severe drought in the final year revealed reduced amounts of multi-enzyme activities, total EL-FAME as a proxy for microbial community size, and total fungi. We recognize the difficulty in detecting soil health changes within the first years of transition because of inherent differences in soil properties and previous managements across commercial fields. In contrast to controlled research plots with uniform cropping in all scenarios, these fields reflect the real changes and challenges in soil health that producers deal with under these transition scenarios especially the role of precipitation. The early trends toward reduced soil C and N stores and relative declines in fungal abundances with severe drought indicate that dryland management in the Texas High Plains challenges soil health for cropland. The same producer fields continue to be monitored for longer-term changes in soil health indicators to separate irrigation-management effects from annual oscillations in rainfall.