Physical-hydric attributes of a cultivated Oxisol and under forest cover in the Brejo Paraibano region

Abstract

The cultivation of the soil causes changes in their physical-hydrics attributes, depending on the management which are submitted. Thus, the objective of this work was to evaluate physical-hydrics attributes of an Oxisol cultivated with cowpea and under forest. Disturbed (for soil texture analysis) and undisturbed (for measure soil bulk density, macro, micro and total porosity) samples were collected in the 0-0.20, 0.20-0.40 and 0.40-0.60 m layers in an area cultivated with cowpea (04 ha) and a contiguous area of native forest (03 ha), located at CCA/UFPB belonging to the Municipality of Areia, PB. In each layer and in the soil use systems different were collected five repetitions, totaling 15 samples per treatment. Infiltration tests were conducted to determine the hydraulic conductivity and water retention curves parameters. The cowpea provided significantly higher values of soil bulk density and lower total porosity, macroporosity and saturated hydraulic conductivity. Despite soil bulk density and macroporosity did not reach the critical values recommended in the literature as limiting the development of crops, cowpea caused substantial changes of soil physical-hydric quality, when compared with native forest.