ECOLOGICAL REHABILITATION OF DEGRADED LANDS AND BARREN HILLS FOR SUSTAINABLE AGRICULTURAL DEVELOPMENT ON WATERSHED BASIS AT KHARAIYA NALA (JHANSI)

摘要

An area of 665 ha of community land comprised mostly degraded hills belonging to a cluster of seven villages at Jhansi covering an area of 5395 ha was fully treated with appropriate soil and water conservation measures. The entire community land was planted with number of tree species and shrubs and seeded with grasses and legumes. A number of tree species viz. Butea monosperma, Acacia leucophloea, Ziziphus numularia, Logarstroemia parviflora, Acacia catechu, A. nilotica, Anogeissus pendula etc. wereregenerated due to improvement in soil moisture status including protection. These activities lead to restoring 317 ha of wastelands into cultivation, increased irrigation water availability from a meagre 10 to 69 per cent, increased cropping intensityfrom 81 to 172 per cent and increased crop productivity from 0.7 to 2.8 t/ha . The soil and water conservation treatments have a great impact in reducing soil loss from 22.5 to 1.7 t/ha, run off water loss from 49 to 20 per cent of annual rainfall and sedimentation from 36 to 1 cm . Forage productivity was greatly increased from initial 0.7 to 5.3 t/ha. Higher fuelwood availability from third year onwards resulted in substantial reduction of cowdung for fuel purposes and now used as organic manure for crop production. Soil organic carbon value was greatly appreciated from 0.20 to 0.80 per cent and also the soil fertility status.