Evaluating the Soil Quality of Forest, Broom Grass and Cultivated Land Uses in Hilly Agro-ecosystem, Meghalaya Plateau, North East India

Abstract

Soil quality can be inferred from selected chemical soil indicators and it may be altered under the impact of changes in land uses (LUS). For achieving sustainable management practices the soil quality indicators (SQI) should be measured. The objective of this study was to compare the soil quality index in forest, Broom and cultivated land use systems in some areas of Meghalaya, using a completely randomized design at nine different land uses containing Mixed-Forest, Pine-Forest, Broom-Grass, Rice-Potato, Rice-Cabbage, Upland Rice-Monocrop, Lowland Rice-Monocrop, upland pineapple crop and slash-burn cropping system with three replications and two depths. 54 soil samples were collected from the surface and subsurface soil depth of diverse LUS and 9 soil chemical attributes was selected for SQI. Values of SQI deduced using the average factorial deviation from the values of soil quality indicators of diverse LUS site relative to their value of the mixed forest as a (reference) scaled to 100 per cent. The results showed that the pine forest land use had the premier value of SQI (98.99) and poorest in the rice-potato (70.00) land use system in both the depth compared to mixed forest land. It can be concluded that cultivated land use decreases soil quality index such as rice-potato system.