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Biochar can improve the soil quality of new creation farmland on the Loess Plateau

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Abstract

The Loess Plateau is the most severely degraded soil area worldwide and represents one of the lowest areas of soil productivity. To solve the conundrum between increasing populations and decreasing agricultural acreage, enhancing the quantity of cultivated land, gully land consolidation projects has been implemented. However, the new creation farmland soil is not enough to satisfy the demand of agricultural production. An incubation experiment was conducted to determine the effects of biochar on the new creation farmland soil. Five levels of amendments (0, 1%, 2%, 5%, and 10% (wt%) biochar soil) were used, and the soil columns remained in the laboratory for approximately 2 months. The results show that biochar proportion was a more important factor than incubation time across all soils tested. The soil moisture content and particle size clearly increased as the amendment level increased; however, the soil pH decreased gradually with incubation time and tended to slow soil salinization. These findings will have to be verified under field conditions.

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Acknowledgments

We appreciate the editors of the journal and the reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions and knowledge.

Funding

National Key Research and Development Project of China (NO:2017YFD0800500).

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Correspondence to Yi-Ping Chen.

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Responsible editor: Philippe Garrigues

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Su, CC., Ma, JF. & Chen, YP. Biochar can improve the soil quality of new creation farmland on the Loess Plateau. Environ Sci Pollut Res 26, 2662–2670 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3550-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-018-3550-5

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