Integrated Isotopic Approaches for an Area-wide Precision Conservation to Control the Impacts of Agricultural Practices on Land Degradation and Soil Erosion

Objective:

The overall objective is to develop integrated isotopic approaches to identify hot spot areas of land degradation in agricultural catchments for effective soil conservation measures (precision conservation). Specific research objectives are (i) to develop the combined use of Fallout Radionuclide (FRN) techniques with conventional techniques and spatial analysis to establish soil redistribution patterns and rates over several temporal scales on an area-wide basis (catchment), (ii) to develop and validate protocols for the application of compound specific stable isotope (CSSI) techniques to identify and apportion the amount of source soils (land-degraded areas) from main land uses / management (cropland, grassland and forestland) in the catchment, (iii) to integrate nuclear based approaches with other non-nuclear techniques through modelling and other tools to establish comprehensive soil redistribution studies on an area-wide basis and (iv) to create the basis to develop decision support tools for implementing precision conservation and contributing to sustainable land management.

Activities:

This CRP was formulated on the basis of recommendation of a Consultants' Meeting held at IAEA Headquarters, Vienna, 5-7 November 2007. The first RCM of the CRP will take place at IAEA HQ from 8 – 12 June 2009. Eight research contract holders from Chile, China Peoples Republic, Morocco, Poland, Russian Federation, Syrian Arab Republic and Vietnam, three technical contract holders from Germany (University of Hohenheim), New Zealand (National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research) and United Kingdom (University of Exeter) will be attending the meeting, and three agreement holders from Australia (CSIRO), Canada (University of Manitoba) and United Kingdom (University of Plymouth). The purpose of the meeting is to discuss objectives of the CRP, review individual experimental plans, and develop detailed experimental and sampling protocols for identifying hot spot areas of land degradation in agricultural catchments for effective soil conservation measures.