Activities per year
Abstract
Global climate change is leading to a significant increase in flooding events in many countries. Current practices to prevent damage to downstream urban areas include allowing the flooding of upstream agricultural land. Earthworms are ecosystem engineers, but their abundances in arable land are already reduced due to pressure from farming practices. If flooding increases on agricultural land, it is important to understand how earthworms will respond to the dual stresses of flooding and agricultural land use. The earthworm populations under three land uses (pasture, field margin, and crops), across two UK fields, were sampled seasonally over an 18-month period in areas of the fields which flood frequently and areas which flood only rarely. Earthworm abundance in the crop and pasture soils and total earthworm biomass in the crop soils was significantly lower in the frequently flooded areas than in the rarely flooded areas. The relative percentage difference in the populations between the rarely and frequently flooded areas was greater in the crop soils ( 59.18% abundance, -63.49% biomass) than the pasture soils (-13.39% abundance, 9.66% biomass). In the margin soils, earthworm abundance was significantly greater in the frequently flooded areas (+140.56%), likely due to higher soil organic matter content and lower bulk density resulting in soil conditions more amenable to earthworms. The findings of this study show that earthworm populations already stressed by the activities associated with arable land use are more susceptible to flooding than populations in pasture fields, suggesting that arable earthworm populations are likely to be increasingly at risk with increased flooding.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 142102 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Science of the Total Environment |
Volume | 754 |
Early online date | 1 Sept 2020 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 1 Feb 2021 |
Bibliographical note
© 2020 Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy.Keywords
- flooding
- land use
- earthworms
- climate change
- population dynamics
Activities
- 2 Conference
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British Ecological Society Annual Meeting
Tamsyn Birgitta Wilshire Kiss (Presenter), Mark Edward Hodson (Advisor) & Xiaohui Chen (Producer)
16 Dec 2018 → 19 Dec 2018Activity: Participating in or organising an event › Conference
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British Ecological Society Annual Meeting
Mark Edward Hodson (Producer), Tamsyn Birgitta Wilshire Kiss (Presenter), Xiaohui Chen (Producer) & Tom Sizmur (Producer)
16 Dec 2018 → 19 Dec 2018Activity: Participating in or organising an event › Conference