Soil erosion in sloping farmland is a key ecological and environmental issue that threats the
sustainable agricultural development on the Loess Plateau of China. Knowledge of infiltration process is
crucial for understanding and managing hydrological processes and soil erosion in sloping farmland. The
objective of this study was to clarify the infiltration characteristics in sloping farmland at different stages of
crop growth. The soybean ( Glycine max L. ) was selected as our research object and its growth was
divided into four stages: initial flowering stage ( R1
) ,late flowering stage ( R2
) ,pod bearing stage
( R4
) ,and maturity starting stage ( R5
) . The bare sloping farmland was set as control ( CK) . Runoff
from experimental plots was collected under the simulated rainfall condition,the infiltration processes and
characteristics were analyzed,and the infiltration processes were simulated with the Horton and Kostiakov
infiltration models. The following results were obtained. For the four growth stages of soybean,
parameters such as initial infiltration rate,stable infiltration rate,cumulative infiltration amount and
infiltration recharge coefficient presented generally the order as R5 > R4 > R2 > R1 > CK at different
rainfall intensities and slope gradients. The recharge coefficient increased with growth stages butdecreased with slope gradient. The crop coverage was the important factor for determining the recharge
coefficient. Simulated infiltration processes with Horton and Kostiakov models showed that two models fit
well with the infiltration and could reflect the infiltration characteristics while the fitting effect of Horton
was better than Kostiakov. The results of our study are helpful for better understanding of the infiltration
processes and characteristics in sloping farmland during the crop growth stages.
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