Estimation of soil loss due to potato harvesting in Ghorveh-Dehgolan plain, Kurdestan Province

Soil erosion is one of the hazards with on-site and off-site effects that gradually cause decreasing soil quality, land degradation, surface water contaminations, reduction of dam’s reservoirs capacity and threating of human food security. The soil loss due to crop harvesting (SLCH) has been considered less comparing the soil erosion types by researches. The objective of this study is therefore to estimate the Potato soil loss due to crop harvesting in the Ghorveh-Dehgolan plain, Kurdestan province. In view of this, 20 samples of potato with weight of 5 kg were collected from dry land and irrigated cultivated lands in the study area. In the laboratory, after washing the samples, the suspensions were filtrated and the remained soils on filter paper were dried and the SLCH determined. The results showed that the SLCH ranged 13.4 to 40.4 g kg-1. The results of one-way ANOVA showed that there is significance difference between SLCH from dry land farming and irrigating cultivation with the confidence level of 95%. The results of cluster analysis also indicated the weak relationships between samples collected from both land use types. The soil loss due to potato harvesting from 80490.4 ha in ten last years was 72374.52 Mg with annual average of 7237 Mg yr-1. Also, the mean soil erosion due to potato harvesting ranged from 0.66 to 1.14 Mg ha-1 harvest-1. The results of this study demonstrated that the soil losses caused by crop harvesting can be of the same order of magnitude as soil losses caused by water erosion processes that should be considered by researchers and planners in soil erosion control and conservation fields.