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The Effect of Cultivation on Erodibility of Soils by Wind¹

ABSTRACT

Physical and chemical analyses of the soil samples chosen at random from over 90 fields from western Kansas during 1949 and 1950 were made to determine the rates of soil deterioration that are associated with the type of agriculture employed since the breaking of the virgin sod.

In land that has been utilized for grain production for 19 years about 9 inches of topsoil, constituting all of the A horizon, has been removed, mainly by wind erosion. This land is now much less productive and contains substantially less organic matter and less undecomposed crop residues than the newly broken land. Due to lower amounts of crop residue this "old" cultivated land is more exposed to erosion by wind and water. The soil itself, however, is more resistant to erosion now than when it was first brought under cultivation, due to the presence at the surface of the finer textured and more structurally developed soil of the original B horizon. When the protective influence of crop residues was discounted, the old cultivated land was found to be less than half as erodible as land broken out of virgin sod between 1946 and 1948. With crop failures such as occur on all types of land in dry years, the recently broken land would apparently become most vulnerable to erosion by wind.

¹ Contribution No. 449, Department of Agronomy, Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station, Manhattan, Kans., and the Soil Conservation Service, U.S.D.A. Cooperative investigations in the mechanics of wind erosion.

² Professor of Soils, Kansas Agricultural Experiment Station, and Agent, Soil Conservation Service; Soil Scientist, Soil Conservation Service; and Project Supervisor, Soil Conservation Service, respectively.

This study was planned cooperatively by research and operations personnel of the Soil Conservation Service, the Kansas State College, and the Bureau of Plant Industry, Soils, and Agricultural Engineering. Acknowledgment is due in particular to L. B. Olmstead, C. L. Fly, R. V. Olson, and C. S. Parsons for carrying out some of the analytical work.