ABSTRACT

Water is one of the most crucial inputs in agricultural production and as such needs to be utilized judiciously. The effect of land use on the water transmission properties of soils for two seasons was conducted in Isu local government area of Imo state Nigeria. Four land uses namely an Oil Palm Plantation OPPL, a Primary Forest PFL, a Continuously Cultivated Land CCL and a Sand Mining Site, SM served as the experimental treatments. The result shows that the soil water transmission properties varied significantly across the land uses (P≤0.05) in all seasons. The variations of soil water transmission properties as a result of land use showed significant differences in both the first and second year studies with the PFL having the best rating for bulk density (1.5g/cm3), porosity (43.1%) and saturated hydraulic conductivity (17.2 cm/hr). Similarly, the variations of water transmission properties across the two seasons revealed the significant differences in the water transmission properties across the two seasons with the dry season having 39.1% of total porosity, 14.5 cm/hr of Ksat and 1.63 g/cm3 of bulk density. The second year saw the raining season having higher bulk density (1.67 g/cm3), 20.2% of moisture content against the 15.1% in the dry season. Also the effect of land use, depth and seasons indicated a significant difference in %FC, PWP and %AWC. Similarly the infiltration characteristics in the four land uses were significantly different with the PFL having the highest infiltration characteristics in both seasons and years. The PFL recorded the highest infiltration characteristics in both the rainy and dry seasons of the first and second years. Thus, the infiltration rate and accumulated infiltration was significantly affected by the land uses as well as seasons, thus the PFL, OPPL and SM had 134 mm/hr, 105.8 mm/hr and 28.8 mm/hr. The high infiltration characteristic makes it possible for the soils to be prone to leaching. Mulching, conservation tillage and liming is recommended in order to restore the productive potentials of the soils for sustainable agricultural production.