Variación de carbono sobre la erosión hídrica del estrato herbazal de páramo, en la zona suroccidental de la subcuenca del río Chambo.

Abstract

This research aimed to know the relationship between the organic carbon content of the soil and the loss of soil due to water erosion in the moorland grassland stratum of the southwestern area of the Chambo River Subbasin, using the loss method by ignition (LOI) for soil organic carbon and the RUSLE model (Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation) in ArcGIS 10.8 environment for water erosion. For organic carbon, soil samples were taken at two depths (0 – 30 centimeters and 30 – 60 centimeters) using stratified random sampling. Soil organic carbon data were obtained using methods adjusted by the Laboratory of the Research and Development Group for Environment and Climate Change (GIDAC) protocols. The descriptive statistics in the analysis at different depths and degrees of intervention indicate that the soils suffer a difference in all their parameters. In this way, average acidic pH values were obtained (6.34 to 6.46); electrical conductivity from 55.33 uS/cm to 62.61 uS/cm; relative humidity from 19.51% to 47.86%; the apparent density from 0.95 g/cm3 to 1.13 g/cm3; Soil organic matter obtained similar values at different depths; soil organic carbon of 88.39 tons/hectare in altered paramo and 164.22 tons/hectare in unaltered paramo, respectively; and in water erosion values were found between 0 to 687 tons/hectare.year, negligible erosion occupies a greater surface area with 88.84% and the smallest surface area is irreversible erosion with 0.1%. Furthermore, it was established that there was a low positive direct linear correlation between soil organic carbon and water erosion, which were not as influential as each other.