They 'pose a threat to the long-term productivity of arable land.'
A simulation from the paper comparing the effect of a typical load in the 1960s and in the 2000s on the subsoil.
It's been obvious for a long time that the weight of farm vehicles driving over fields causes the upper layers of soil to compact. Engineers have mitigated this by putting progressively bigger tires on heavier farm vehicles. They've also used more flexible materials that make it possible to inflate the tires to lower pressure. Those changes increase the amount of surface area contact between the vehicle and the ground.
"Trends of increasing weights of agricultural machinery suggest that the focus of agricultural vehicle design on increasing efficiency, floatation, and traction may have ignored intrinsic soil limits exceeded with deeper subsoil stress propagation," according to the researchers. Those layers of subsoil may be hidden from view, but they play an important role in what happens at the surface.
This map from the paper estimates the relative susceptibility of subsoil to compaction based on mechanization levels, farm sizes, estimated tractor size, soil texture, and climatic average water content calculated. Unlike so many problems, this one has a relatively straightforward solution. The researchers say the issue could be addressed if"future agricultural vehicles [are] designed with intrinsic soil mechanical limits in mind to avoid chronic soil compaction." Stay ahead with the latest science, technology and innovation news, for free:
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