Response of soil nutrient structure and aggregate strength to land use in a typical area in the Loess Plateau, China

Changes in land use patterns have important implications for soil structure and soil nutrient transport processes. This paper is based on the project of returning farmland to forests in the Loess Plateau-Ziwuling area of China. Explore the phase changes of the aggregate structure and nutrients content and its effect on soil infiltration and erodibility during the changing land use process. Identify the effective time domain for soil management in the area, which provide a scientific basis for coordinating regional land use and efficient soil erosion control. The results showed that with the increase of soil recovery/opening time, the content of soil water stable aggregates (SWAG), soil organic matter (SOM), total nitrogen (TN) and total phosphorus (TP) showed an increasing /decreasing trend. In the process of soil reclamation, the content of organic matter in large-size aggregates (>5mm) decreases first at a higher rate, while in land restoration process, the content of organic matter in small-sized (2-5mm) aggregates increases rapidly. With the increase of soil reclamation time, the initial time of runoff production is advanced. In the 30-year of the land restoration process, the erodibility K decreased by 87%, and the SOC content has reached 96% to the common forest level, indicate that the soil quality is greatly improved when the land returns to this moment, the ability to resist erosion reaches a certain level and tends to be stable, and it is considered that the input and output of the governance before the time node is relatively high.