Changes in soil physical properties in the post flood scenario in selected land use systems in Central Kerala, India

Abstract

Kerala had a flood on Aug, 2018 with a different duration or temporal variation from three to seven days due to heavy and unexpected rain during the month. The current study focussed on the impact of flood on soil physical properties [soil texture, soil porosity and bulk density (BD)] of five different land use (LU) systems (forest, rubber plantation, nutmeg plantation, coconut plantation and open land) in Thrissur district of Kerala, India. Coconut plantation showed a significant decrease in soil BD (0.14g cc-1) and porosity (8.03%) due to flood. Soil texture has changed in forest (sandy clay loam to clay loam), coconut (loamy sand to sandy clay loam) and open (loamy sand to silty clay loam) LU system after flood. The results support the resilience of tree-based LU system (forest, rubber plantation and nutmeg plantation) or the quick recovering capacity against the long-term effect of flood. Integrating tree species into coconut plantation and tree less systems would help to restore the LU system from the adverse impact of short duration floods.