Response of soil shear strength of bio-embankments for slope farmland to drying-wetting effect in Purple Hilly Area

Abstract: As a typical agroforestry system, bio-embankments formed by planting trees, shrubs or herbaceous in terrace ridge are effective farming measures for soil and water conservation in Purple Hilly Area. Bio-embankments not only could prevent soil erosion from slope farmland, but also greatly improve the soil quality and agricultural production conditions for cultivated land. The bio-embankment of slope farmland is often prone to collapse under heavy rainfall condition, which mainly attributed to the deformation and failure of slope caused by soil drying-wetting effect during the continuous raining- infiltration-evaporating process. Soil shear strength is one of the important determinants for slope stability of bio-embankments, which mainly influenced by soil structure, soil particle morphology and soil moisture content. The soil moisture of bio-embankments is often constantly changing along with the drying-wetting-drying circulation under a single rainfall condition, which would greatly weaken stability of bio-embankments. Recently, soil shear strength mainly focused on indoor simulation experiment conducted under such single factor as soil water content, soil bulk density, root system, soil particle composition, and some multi-factor combination experiments were also carried out. However, the changing characteristics of soil content and soil shear strength under drying-wetting-drying circulations caused by a natural raining and evaporating effect is unclear. The study mainly discussed the following facts as: 1) the variation trend of soil moisture for different bio-embankment layers under three-types natural rainfall condition; 2) the effects of different bio-embankment types on soil moisture variation; 3) the response characteristics of soil cohesion and soil internal friction angle of different bio-embankments on wetting-drying effect of rainfall and evaporation. Taking the bio-embankments with mulberry (SS) and zanthoxylum (HJ) planted in terrace ridge of slope farmland in purple hilly area of Southwest University, Chongqing as objects and bio-embankment with natural grass as control (CK), the paper systematically analyzed the attenuation and recovery effect of soil moisture and soil shear strength of bio-embankments under drying-wetting condition of different natural rainfall. The method of field and laboratory tests were conducted to observe soil moisture, soil cohesion, soil internal friction angle and root characters before and after different natural rainfall intensity such as light rain (0.64 mm/h), heavy rain (1.37 mm/h) and rainstorm (3.46 mm/h) from the field experiments were carried out from June to September 2014. The results indicated that: 1) The soil moisture of bio-embankments under drying-wetting condition presented a variation trend as sharp increase-sharp decrease-fluctuation stable, of which the changes amplitude and interaction depth increased with increasing rainfall intensity. The soil moisture showed obvious change in soil layer of 0-20 cm under light rain (0.64 mm/h), and varied obviously in soil layer of 0-30 cm under heavy rain (2.37 mm/h) and rainstorm (3.46 mm/h), which tended to be stable in 5h,7h, 9th day after natural rainfall stopped, respectively. 2) Both the soil cohesive strength and soil internal friction angle of bio-embankments showed a change trend as decaying sharply-stabilizing relatively-recovering gradually under the condition of drying-wetting. The soil cohesion strength and soil internal friction angle of bio-embankments were enhanced in 9th day after light rain, of which the enhancement showed a decreasing trend with increasing soil depth. Compared with the state before the rain, the soil cohesion strength of HJ, SS and CK increased by 2.46%, 2.95% and 0.66% respectively; meanwhile, their internal friction angle increased by 2.40%, 3.17%, and 1.19%, respectively. 3) The soil cohesion and soil internal friction angle decreased in 9th day after rainstorm compared with the original state before rain. Bio-embankments with mulberry and zanthoxylum could significantly weaken the deterioration effect of drying-wetting on soil shearing strength, and the effect of mulberry measures was better than the other two. Compared with CK, the soil cohesion degradation rates of HJ and SS bio-bio-embankments decreased by 44.03% and 65.05%, respectively, and the degradation rates of soil internal friction angle of HJ and SS bio-embankments decreased by 42.47% and 45.70%, respectively. The research results could provide some technical supports for design of bio-embankment design and soil and water utilization of cultivated-layer for slope farmland in purple hilly area.