Mitigating phosphorus leaching from a clay loam through structure liming
Date
2022-11-01
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Taylor & Francis Group - Informa UK Limited
Abstract
Phosphorus (P) losses from clay soils can be mitigated by introducing measures for improving soil structure. These include structure liming, where a mixture of CaO or Ca(OH)2 and CaCO3 is added to the soil. In a field experiment with separately tile-drained plots on a clay loam in Sweden, we examined the effects of structure liming on leaching of total-P, phosphate P (PO4-P) and total nitrogen (N) during three years after initial application. The treatments included two application rates (8 and 16 t ha−1) of a common product in comparison with a control (no lime). Effects of structure liming emerged during the second and third year after application, with 45 and 38% lower total-P leaching than in the unlimed control. A significant effect of the application rate was found in the third year. Nitrogen leaching and crop yield were not affected. As expected, soil pH raised following structure lime addition. Measurements of aggregate stability did not confirm the reduction in P leaching, indicating that it is important to measure P concentrations in drainage water directly when assessing the effect of structure liming.
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Acknowledgements: We wish to thank the field staff at Hushållningssällskapet Halland, Maria Blomberg for technical assistance, the water laboratory at the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Assessment and the Soil and Crop Laboratory at the Department of Soil and Environment, SLU. © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Version of Scholarly Record of this Article is published in Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section B — Soil & Plant Science, 2022, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09064710.2022.2138528 . Keywords: Arable land; eutrophication; limestone; nitrogen; dissolved phosphorus; soil structure; Europe; Sweden; leaching; clay loam.
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Keywords
Research Subject Categories::FORESTRY, AGRICULTURAL SCIENCES and LANDSCAPE PLANNING::Soil science
Citation
Lisbet Norberg & Helena Aronsson (2022) Mitigating phosphorus leaching from a clay loam through structure liming, Acta Agriculturae Scandinavica, Section B — Soil & Plant Science, 72:1, 987-996, DOI: 10.1080/09064710.2022.2138528