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SOIL WATER EVAPORATION SUPPRESSION BY SAND MULCHES

This paper reports experiments performed to study sand as a soil mulch. The objective was to determine the comparative effectiveness of 0-, 2-, and 6-cm-thick covering sand layers in suppressing evaporation from columns of soil. Measurements were made by using potential evaporation rates of 1.1 and 0.55 cm/d. In addition to evaporation, soil water distribution with depth was measured for the different sand-cover treatments. Five treatments were studied: check (no sand mulch), 6 cm of coarse sand (C6), 6 cm of fine sand (F6), 2 cm of coarse sand (C2), and 2 cm of fine sand (F2). After 35 d of experiment, the cumulative evaporations for the check, C6, F6, C2, and F2 treatments were measured as 6.79, 1.50, 1.55, 3.76, and 4.62 cm of water, respectively, at a potential evaporation of 1.1 cm/d and, for the potential evaporation of 0.55 cm/d, was correspondingly 6.68, 0.95, 1.21, 2.71, and 4.28 cm. These sets of numbers show that there was marked evaporation reduction for the sand mulches with respect to bare soil (check). The 6-cm sand mulches were the most effective evaporation suppressors. For equal mulch thickness, coarse sand was only slightly more effective than fine sand. Results from soil water distributions with depth for the various treatments also indicated that the sand mulches were effective in conserving soil water against evaporation losses. The mulches were effective in this order: C6 > F6 > C2 > F2.