World Journal of
Pharmaceutical and Life Sciences

PERFORMANCE EVALUATION OF BIOLOGICAL SOIL AND WATER CONSERVATION MEASURES AT PHYSICALLY TREATED GULLY SIDE OF TANQUA ABERGELE WATERSHEDS

Meresa Weleslasie* and Guesh Assefa

ABSTRACT

Gully erosion is the worst form of erosion affecting to the society and environment, primarily caused by surface runoff and dramatically accelerated due to human induced factors. Biological Soil and Water Conservation (BSWC) grasses have a great contribution in protecting soil erosion and gully rehabilitation. The study was initiated with the aim of evaluating the performance and growth rate of selected biological soil and water conservation grasses towards gully rehabilitation and soil loss reduction. The study was conducted at Agbe (Maytsahli sub - watershed) in Tanqua Abergelle districts, which is located in central zone of Tigray regional state. The study area was selected purposively based on the prevalence of soil erosion problem and gully occurrence. Five treatments with three replications were applied using Randomized Complete Block Design (RCBD) with a plot size of 4 m * 6 m. Field observation, interview and measurements were used to collect the data. Height of growth rate, dimension of gully section and volume of soil loss data were analyzed using Statistical package for Social Science (SPSS) and Microsoft-excel softwares. The obtained result of grass height was evaluated four times per year with in three (3) months interval. The analysis result showed that, Giant reed grass had the highest (2.31 m) growth performance followed by elephant grass (1.46 m) as compared with vetiver (0.81 m) and sisal (0.53 m) grases, due to their physiological behavior of each grasses. Due to implementation of BSWC grasses, the depth of the gully was reduced from 1.75 m to 1.51 m and the width of the gully remains constant. The volume of soil loss from the gully section was also reduced from 559 ton/ha/yr to 468 ton/ha/yr. Therefore, the BSWC grasses showed a promising contribution in reducing soil loss from the gully. Therefore, farmers, experts and stakeholders should have to expand and disseminate those technologies to all watersheds in order to stabilize gully and reduce soil loss.

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