1 research outputs found
Changes in soil redox potential in response to flood irrigation with waste water in central Mexico
Irrigation with untreated sewage water adds fresh organic matter to the soil. When it is applied by flooding, as in the Mezquital Valley of Mexico, many of the pores in the soil become temporarily waterlogged and depleted of oxygen, and reduction generates nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4). We monitored the redox potential, Eh, in the soil at two sites in the Mezquital Valley to discover whether the shortâterm gaseous emissions matched the changes in Eh. One site is irrigated periodically by flooding with waste water and has alfalfa, rye grass and maize grown in succession; the other site grows maize with water from summer rain only. Each electrode buried in the soil for the purpose produced sequences of measurements that were correlated in time. We modelled the correlation and took it into account to analyse the effects of the irrigation by residual maximum likelihood (reml). After each flooding, the redox potential under alfalfa and rye grass decreased by 150â200 mV from a norm of about 450 mV for 2 days, after which it returned to its norm. The shortâterm response to flooding under maize was similar, but the redox potential did not recover completely; instead there was a decrease from one irrigation event to another, in particular as a result of heavy rain in September that saturated the soil. The soil under rainâfed maize was slower to respond, partly, we believe, because infiltration into the less aggregated clay soil and drainage from it were also slow. Irrigation with untreated sewage water caused a sharp decrease in Eh lasting 1â2 days. It seems to have depleted the soil of oxygen, causing reduction in microhabitats rich in carbon and nitrogen and generation of N2O, which was captured in the closed chambers that we had installed.