Estimation of soil erosion rates in oil palm plantation with different land cover

Abstract

Soil losses from hill slopes in oil palm plantation in Sedenak Estate, Johor were measured using runoff plot and rainfall simulator. The plot was designed to be removable but the size was fixed at 8 x 3.75m. Four types of surface covers were investigated for the plots, i.e. half bare soil and half grass cover (HGC), half bare soil and half dry frond (HDF), fully grass cover (FG), and fully bare soil (BS). The influence of initial soil moisture, saturated hydraulics conductivity, Ks, bulk density and slope on rates of soil loss were also evaluated. The rainfall simulator produced rainfall intensities between 90 and 160 mm/hr with durations from 45 to 60 min per run. BS plot exhibited the highest Ks value among all plots but the percentage of initial soil moisture on this surface was low. BS plot recorded the highest runoff coefficient (C) and soil loss values of 73.6 ± 4 percent and 5.26 ± 3.2 t/ha respectively, while the lowest was from plot FG with 41.7 ± 5.7 percent and soil loss of 2.85 ± 2.1 t/ha. Meanwhile, the results suggested that the ground cover had the ability to reduce soil loss by 67% and 17%, respectively for plots BS-HGC and BS-HDF. Overall, soil erosion control such as surface is effective measures in reducing level of runoff and soil erosion.