Soil water infiltration in four biochar-amended soils from Oregon

The objective of this project was to evaluate the potential for biochar soil amendments to mitigate agricultural drought by characterizing their impacts on soil hydraulics and plant growth across a range of agricultural soil conditions. This data set contains soil water infiltration measurements using Beerkan infiltration rings in four Oregon agricultural soils amended with biochar. Gasified biochars made from wheat straw (AgEnergy, Spokane, WA) and conifer wood (BioLogical, Philomath, OR) were tilled into soils at experimental stations in Madras (loam), Pendleton (silt loam), Aurora (sandy loam), and Klamath Falls (loamy sand). The biochars were incorporated by tillage in fall 2016 to a depth of 12 cm at rates equating to 0, 9, 18, and 36 Mg/ha (about 0.5, 1, 2, and 4% by mass in the tillage zone), with three replicate plots per treatment. In April and May 2017 infiltration was measured by inserting small rings into the soil surface and determining the time required for repeated 10 0mL volumes of water to infiltrate. From each infiltration experiment we estimated steady-state infiltration rate, and where possible we also estimated field saturated soil hydraulic conductivity (Kfs). Diagnostic plots demonstrated that in about half of the measurements sets, Kfs could be estimated by modeling infiltration as a two-term function of sorptivity and Kfs. In the remaining plots, additional unknown factors that influenced infiltration prevented estimation of Kfs, possibly due to air entrapment, soil layering, or ring insertion effects in the remaining experiments. Increasing biochar amendment rates led to an increase in infiltration rate only for the CW biochar at the silt loam site. For all other soil-biochar combinations no patterns in infiltration rate were detectable.

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  "geospatial"
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