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ARS Home » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #71613
Title: CONVERSION TO NO-TILL INFLUENCE ON INCREMENTAL SOIL PROPERTIES

Author
item Logsdon, Sally
item Kaspar, Thomas

Submitted to: Agronomy Abstracts
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 11/8/1996
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: No-till practices reduce erosion but there is concern over compaction during the early years of no-till. The objective of this study was to examine soil properties in fine depth increments (20 mm) during the early years of strict no-till, and to compare with a chisel or disk system. Under controlled traffic in loess soils, soil density was less for a chisel system than for a no-till for most of the 60 to 180 mm depths in the first three years. Under random traffic on loess soils, there were no significant differences in density between the tillage systems. Under random traffic for glacial till soils, variations of soil density within and across seasons were larger than treatment effects. No-till had consistently wetter soil than a disk system for the 0 to 140 mm depths in glacial till soils because of greater residue cover at the soil surface. For two studies on loess soils, there were no differences in water content between no-till and chisel plots. In the loess soils, no-till had significantly greater residue than chisel only for the top 20 mm depth.