Information
Level 2 Detail of experimental conditions (what might be found in a journal paper or project brief in Hydstra)
Description of study
What?
The impact of tillage, grazing, native woodland and the soil conservation bank spacing on surface runoff was monitored over a 4 year period.
When and Where?
The site is located on a low slope below a large dome of sandy red earths and is comprised of loamy red earths. It is above the drainage floor backplain and levees associated with the Douglas River. The site has a north easterly aspect with slopes of 1-2% and an elevation of approximately 50m above sea level. Climate within the region is characterised by a distinct wet and dry season with >90% of rainfall recorded between November and March. Prior to clearing the site contained Eucalyptus foelsceana, E. Confertiflora and E. Tectficia.
How?
7 bays were installed ranging in size from 4.1 to 7.8ha (Figure 1) separated by narrow based soil conservation banks on 0.6% slopes. Bays 1 to 5 were cropped on a maize/soybean rotation with conventional inversion type tillage using discs, reduced surface tillage using tynes and no tillage systems. The crops were sown in 1985 and verano based pasture cattle (0.8 beasts/ha) were introduced in December 1987.
Each bay had a parshall flume, with an ISCO 2300 flowmeter which displayed output on an ISCO 2310 plotter (total flow volumes, runoff hydrographs and sediment sampling systems). Six 8 inch tipping bucket pluviometers were installed surrounding the site. A weather station with a Class A evaporation pan and devices to measure minimum and maximum temperatures, humidity and precipitation were installed throughout the site.
Project administration
Site identifier code: N/A
Principal investigator: Dilshad M & Jonauskas PE
Principal data manager: N/A
Principal organizations: Conservation Commission of the Northern Territory, Cropland Erosion Research Project
Data custodian: Conservation Commission of the Northern Territory
Key co-operators: Douglas Daly Research Farm
Data access policy: Research has been published but base data is not archived
Planned pathway for data: completed study, no evidence of formal database records.
Data warehousing: for ongoing studies N/A
Planned data upload frequency: for ongoing studies N/A
Key references and sources of this data synthesis
These data summaries have been extracted from:
- Dilshad M & Jonauskas PE. (1992). Impact of landuse on agricultural hydrology in the northern territory semi arid tropics. ‘Proceedings of the 5th Australian Soil Conservation Conference’. Perth. Vol. 3: 158 – 166.
Keywords:
Landuse, runoff, dryland cropping, pasture and native vegetation