Preliminary study about soil compaction and awareness in grasslands in Carinthia (south Austria)

The study of the causes and possible remediation strategies at regional level complies with the current European Green deal to monitor soil compaction. We have investigated the influence of different management strategies (use of cattle and machinery) on the storage density and the penetration resistance of permanent grasslands in the south of Austria (Carinthia) based on the recent evidences of soil compaction in two grasslands as studied by Klinger et al. in (2019). Based on this, we have extended the study by selecting more than ten grasslands within two catchments with different management strategies.

The studied indicators were bulk density, soil texture, plant indicators, infiltration capacity, water repellence, water content and electric conductivity at the surface level. Soil profiles of approximately 30 cm were also studied to detect the possible compaction layer and vertical bulk density variations. First results may explain spatial topographical differences i.e. slope and hydrological soil properties and interestingly in some cases, possible correlation between the use of cattle and number of entries in the field and compaction level. We checked if these results contributed or matched farmers awareness.