Erosion is one of the main causes of soil degradation because of the transport of nutrients. The nutrients are transported by water either dissolved or adsorbed on the soil particles, and the erosion rate may vary according to the tillage system. This work was conducted at the Centro de Ciências Agroveterinárias in Lages, Santa Catarina, Brazil, from January 1993 to October 1998, to quantify the losses of phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium and organic carbon due to erosion caused by natural rainfall in the following soil tillage systems: no-tillage, chisel plow plus disking, and plowing plus disking. Both, crop rotation and succession, were used for these three soil preparation systems. An additional treatment consisted of bare soil tillage + plowing plus disking. Soybean, oat, bean, vetch, corn, vetch, soybean, wheat, bean, fodder radish, corn, and oat were cropped in rotation and wheat and soybean in crop succession. The soil was a clayey Inceptisol (Haplumbrept) with a slope of 0.102 m m-1. The soil concentration of phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium and organic carbon was higher under conservation tillage than conventional tillage. Total loss of the elements, however, was little influenced by the tillage systems, but were related with soil and water losses. The concentration of those elements in the erosion sediment was correlated with their concentration in 0-0.025 m soil layer, with presenting an enrichment rate close to one.
conservation tillage; no-tillage; crop rotation; crop succession