Francisco Belmonte Serrato

Efectos sobre la cubierta vegetal, la escorrentía y la erosión del suelo, de la alternancia cultivo-abandono en parcelas experimentales

Are presented results of the hydrological consequences and soil erosion derivatives from the alternations cultivate-abandonment, obtained in erosion plots of the experimental field from The Ardal (Murcia, South-East of Spain). The first results, seem to indicate that in this area, with its special environmental characteristic, the abandonment of cultivation fields, permits an increase in vegetable coverage, grassy annual in the first phase, that go being substituted thereinafter by perennial kinds of the surrounding scrub (Sideritis leucantha, Teucrium capitatum, helichrysum stoechas). This increase in the vegetable coverage united to an increase in crushing of the soil, causes an increase in the percentage of runoff, but at the same time, a decrease with the sediments load, that is translated in a smaller erosion. The intensity of the rain is shown, once again, as one of the fundamental parameters in the generation of runoff and loss of soil.