Keragaan Infiltrasi Tanah Latosol pada Beberapa Penggunaan Lahan di DAS Ciujung

Abstract

Land use is an important aspect in maintaining ecosystem sustainability, particularly in the watershed ecosystem. Land use determines to physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of soil. These soil characteristics influence to the growth of plants and the performances of water infiltration into soil. Infiltration is an essential part of the hydrological cycle that has an important role water availability in the soil. Infiltration process have an important role to the distribution of rainfall and control to runoff, flood, erosion and ground water storage and finally will determines the availability of river discharge in dry season. The aims of this research is to assess the performance of soil infiltration in various land use in Ciujung watershed. The study was conducted on three land use types that included plantative forest (HT), dense mixed garden (KCR), and less-dense mixed garden (KCTR). The field observation was done by using the Double Ring infiltrometer method, while the the analysis of the physical and chemical and other soil characteristics were done in the Laboratory of Soil and Water Conservation, Department of Soil Science and Land Resources, Faculty of Agriculture. The results of this research showed that the infiltration rate is strongly influenced by land use. Infiltration rate is the highest and most stable on HT land use, followed by KCR and KCTR. Constant infiltration rate at HT and KCR is belonging to quickly class, while at KCTR is relatively moderate to fast. The magnitude of the rate constant infiltration in HT (23.4 cm h-1) is higher than KCR (13.2 cm h-1) and KCTR (6.0 cm h-1). The high rate infiltration of the soil on the land use of HT support it able to accommodate as much water (6.45 dm3) that higher than at KCR (3,66 dm3) and at KCTR (1.52 dm3). Infiltration rate is influenced by pores with large size (PDSC), while the volume of water infiltration is more influenced by the total porosity of the soil. Besides it is influenced by land use, soil infiltration in the study area is also determined by the physical and chemical characteristic of the soil organic matter, bulk density, total porosity, aggregate stability, macro pores, very fast drainage pore (PDSC), and soil texture.