Maria Conceição Gonçalves

Maria Conceição Gonçalves
Instituto Nacional de Investigação Agrária e Veterinária (INIAV) | INRB · Sistemas agrários e Florestais e sanidade vegetal - Soils Laboratory

Researcher

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100
Publications
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Publications

Publications (100)
Article
Full-text available
Soil salinization poses a significant threat to agricultural production in Portugal. Collaborative research spanning three decades with the U.S. Salinity Laboratory in Riverside, California, has been instrumental in advancing our understanding of this issue. This study provides a concise overview of the causes of soil salinization in Portugal, focu...
Article
Soil plays a central role in most aspects of human societies, and there is a large body of literature about sustainable soil management. Nevertheless, soil is currently facing degradation arising from different threats, which undermines sustainable development globally. In order to design effective research and policy strategies, it is necessary to...
Article
Full-text available
Electromagnetic induction (EMI) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) are geophysical techniques measuring soil electrical conductivity and providing insights into properties correlated with it to depths of several meters. EMI measures the apparent electrical conductivity (ECa, dS m−1) without physical contact, while ERT acquires apparent ele...
Preprint
Full-text available
Electromagnetic induction (EMI) and electrical resistivity tomography (ERT) are geophysical techniques measuring soil electrical conductivity, providing insights into properties correlated with it, to depths of several meters. EMI measures apparent electrical conductivity (ECa, dS m−1) without physical contact, while ERT acquires apparent electrica...
Article
Full-text available
Soils are the foundation of agricultural production, ecosystem functioning and human well‐being. Bridging soil knowledge gaps and improving the knowledge system is crucial to meet the growing EU soil policy ambitions in the face of climate change and the ongoing trend in soil degradation. The objective of this article is to assess the current state...
Article
Full-text available
Knowledge of the soil water balance is fundamental for improving crop water use in agricultural fields. Estimates are normally for representative and homogeneous areas where the variability of soil properties is neglected. However, this variability significantly impacts soil water dynamics at the field scale. In this study, the MOHID-Land distribut...
Article
Full-text available
Introduction: Soil organic carbon (SOC) sequestration is one of the main ecosystem services provided by well-managed grasslands. In the Mediterranean region, sown biodiverse pastures (SBP) rich in legumes are a nature-based, innovative, and economically competitive livestock production system. As a co-benefit of increased yield, they also contribut...
Article
Full-text available
The area of salt-affected soils is increasing globally, mainly due to land use and management malpractices, which can threaten soil health and the sustainability of farms. Climate change is likely to increase the prevalence of salt-affected soils in many agricultural areas due to increased aridity and, in coastal areas, due to the increase in sea w...
Article
Full-text available
At European scale, soil characteristics are needed to evaluate soil quality, soil health and soil‐based ecosystem services in the context of the European Green Deal. While some soil databases exist at the European scale, a much larger wealth of data is present in individual European countries, allowing a more detailed soil assessment. There is thus...
Article
Orchards consist of complex agricultural systems, with a variety of characteristics (planting density, tree height, training system, canopy cover, irrigation method, interrow management) influencing crop evapotranspiration (ETc). Thus, irrigation water management requires finding crop coefficients (Kc) that represent the characteristics of local or...
Article
Full-text available
The case study is located in an agricultural area of alluvial origin, approximately 10 km northeast of Lisbon (Portugal). The area is a peninsula surrounded by River Tejo, its estuary, and by River Sorraia. The peninsula lies 1 to 2 m above sea level, with saline groundwater arising from the estuarine tides. The soil is typically clayey and homogen...
Article
Full-text available
The awareness about the vital role of soil for nature and society has been increasing. Soil is presently a priority in European research, development, and innovation programs. In order to design effective research strategies, there is the need to identify the current knowledge level and its gaps. With that aim, this study collected systematic infor...
Article
Full-text available
There are currently serious challenges that place great pressure on soil resources. The sustainable management of agricultural land is essential to alleviate these pressures and to increase the contribution of these soils to some of the main challenges facing society, such as adaptation and mitigation of climate change. Within the scope of the EJP...
Article
Full-text available
Using a DUALEM21 sensor, we conducted electromagnetic induction (EMI) surveys in an agricultural field in the Roxo irrigation perimeter in Alentejo, Portugal, to evaluate the potential of using this technique for 3D mapping of soil texture. We first processed apparent electrical conductivity data (ECa) and then used a Quasi-3D inversion algorithm i...
Article
Full-text available
Soil salinization is one of the significant concerns regarding irrigation with saline waters as an alternative resource for limited freshwater resources in arid and semi-arid regions. Thus, the investigation of proper management methods to control soil salinity for irrigation with saline waters is inevitable. The HYDRUS-1D model is a well-known num...
Article
Full-text available
Irrigation is fundamental for agricultural production in Portugal. Climate change forecasts show a tendency towards warmer, drier summers, and a reduction in precipitation depths and frequency. The increase in evapotranspiration associated with irrigation mal practices may lead to a higher concentration of salts in the soil, and consequently to an...
Article
Full-text available
Soil salinity was evaluated, in different soils and irrigated crops, in Roxo’s irrigation district from May 2019 to May 2021. Ten experimental sites were selected, with almond groves, olive groves, citrus and pomegranates installed on AL, LV, RG, PL and VR soils (WRB 2014). The studied cultures had different tolerances to soil salinity. Soil sample...
Article
Full-text available
Utilizing degraded quality waters such as saline water as irrigation water with proper management methods such as leaching application is a potential answer to water scarcity in agricultural systems. Leaching application requires understanding the relationship between the amount of irrigation water and its quality with the dynamic of salts in the s...
Book
Full-text available
Gestión y prevención de la enfermedad causada por Phytophthora cinnamomi en dehesas y montados
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The short review reports a selection of innovations that successfully countered soil salinisation. We reviewed different case studies at the farm-level, in order to be able to identify strategies and define a framework to deal with soil salinisation in Europe.
Article
Full-text available
Hydrological modeling is nowadays critical for evaluating the status, past trends, and future perspectives of water availability at the global, regional, and local scales. The Iberian Peninsula is registering more frequent and severe droughts and water scarcity caused not only by extreme meteorological events, but also by increased demand for water...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
A condutividade eléctrica (CE) é um dos parâmetros mais usados para diagnosticar a salinidade do solo e estimar a concentração de iões no solo. A determinação da CE do solo pode ser realizada no extrato de saturação de uma pasta de solo saturada (CEe) ou em extratos aquosos do solo com diferentes proporções solo:água. O primeiro método é considerad...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
The EMI method provides enormous advantages over traditional methods of soil sampling because it allows in-depth and non-invasive analysis, covering large areas in less time and at a lower cost. However, a proper interpretation of the EMI inversion models in terms of soil salinity dynamics is usually difficult owing to the fact that σ is a complex...
Chapter
This research aims to explore the effects of magnetized waters on spinach matador (Spinacia oleracea L) growth and soil characteristics. Under the pot experiment, two levels of salinity were applied; 0.2 (tap water) and 2.2 g/L (tap water + NaCl). The irrigation waters were treated thanks to a magnetic treatment device of 13.5 mT. The relative grow...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Electromagnetic conductivity imaging (EMCI) is a state-of-the-art methodology for soil salinity assessment over large areas. It involves the following rationale: (1) use of the electromagnetic induction (EMI) geophysical technique to measure the soil apparent electrical conductivity (EC a , mS m −1) over an area; (2) inversion of EC a to obtain EMC...
Article
Lezíria Grande is an important agricultural area in Portugal, prone to waterlogging and salinity problems due to the influence of estuarine tides on groundwater dynamics. Simple, non-invasive, practical approaches are need for monitoring soil salinity in the region and preventing further degradation of soil resources. The objective of this study wa...
Article
Full-text available
Lezíria Grande de Vila Franca de Xira, located in Portugal, is an important agricultural system where soil faces the risk of salinization due to climate change, as the level and salinity of groundwater are likely to increase as a result of the rise of the sea water level and consequently of the estuary. These changes can also affect the salinity of...
Article
Full-text available
Modeling soil hydraulic properties requires an effective representation of capillary and noncapillary storage and conductivity. This is made possible by using physically comprehensive yet flexible soil hydraulic property models. Such a model (Brunswick [BW] model) was introduced by Weber et al. (2019, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018WR024584), and it o...
Article
Full-text available
The mitigation of soil salinization and/or sodicization phenomena are considered one of the main challenges of irrigated agriculture. In Portugal, Lezíria Grande of Vila Franca de Xira is a region with increased salinization and sodicization risks due to the influence of tidal movement on groundwater. This study aimed to evaluate soil water and sal...
Chapter
Full-text available
This minipaper assesses the strategies that can be used to prevent, reduce or adapt to soil salinity at farm level, identifying their sustainability and innovation potential. We begin with a resume of the available strategies and then present the strategies with high innovation potential discussing their limits and advantages, challenges and opport...
Article
Full-text available
The mitigation of soil salinization and/or sodicization phenomena are considered one of the main challenges of irrigated agriculture. In Portugal, Lezíria Grande of Vila Franca de Xira is a region with increased salinization and sodicization risks due to the influence of tidal movement on groundwater. This study aimed to evaluate soil water and sal...
Article
Salt related problems in soils can refer to an excess of soluble salts (saline soils), a dominance of exchangeable sodium in the soil exchange complex (sodic soils), or a mixture of both situations (saline-sodic soils). These categories are important because the impacts and management vary accordingly. Electromagnetic induction (EMI) methods and in...
Preprint
Full-text available
Abstract. Lezíria Grande of Vila Franca de Xira, located in Portugal, is an important agricultural system where soil faces the risk of salinization, being thus prone to desertification and land abandonment. Soil salinity can be assessed over large areas by the following rationale: (1) use of electromagnetic induction (EMI) to measure the soil appar...
Chapter
Weather extreme events raise concerns about the sustainable use of resources in agriculture. Inter- and intra-annual variability in temperature and precipitation leads to increasing water scarcity. In fact, water is a scarce resource in Mediterranean regions, a problem that tends to intensify with global warming. Higher atmospheric evaporative dema...
Article
Soil salinization limits agricultural productivity and can ultimately cause desertification and land abandonment. Traditionally soil salinity is assessed using soil sampling methods for laboratory determinations. These are not representative of soil properties at management scales and are highly time and work consuming, resulting in costly surveys....
Article
Soil salinization limits agricultural productivity and can ultimately cause desertification and land abandonment. One approach to assess soil salinity over large areas efficiently is to use electromagnetic instruments to measure the soil apparent electrical conductivity (ECa – mS/m). ECa data can be then inverted to generate electromagnetic conduct...
Article
Deficit irrigation practices carried out in very high-density olive orchards grown in the Alentejo region of southern Portugal can bring important economic benefits in terms of water savings, yields, and oils. They can also result in serious salinization/sodification problems without proper management of soil and water resources. The main objective...
Article
Full-text available
The Enxoé reservoir has been exhibiting frequent high chlorophyll-a concentrations (reaching a geometric mean six times the national limit for eutrophication of 10 μg L−1) since 2000, and represents the reservoir with the highest eutrophic state in Portugal. Toxic algal blooms have also been observed, which pose serious challenges to water managers...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Drought severity in Southern Europe has increased in the last decades, as a consequence of global warming and climate projections for the 21st century point to an increase in the area affected by droughts in the Iberian Peninsula. Alentejo is one of the driest regions in Portugal where, presently, about 69% of the water withdrawals are from surfac...
Article
Full-text available
The Enxoé reservoir in southern Portugal has been exhibiting the highest trophic state in the country since its early years of operation. The problem has attracted water managers’ and researchers’ attention as the reservoir is the water supply for two municipalities. Extensive research was thus conducted over the last few years, including field mon...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Salinization has been identified as a major cause of soil degradation in countries around the Mediterranean. Soil salinization limits agricultural productivity and can ultimately cause desertification and abandonment of the land. Salinization can also affect the quality of both ground and surface water resources, degrade infrastructures, and decrea...
Conference Paper
Full-text available
Recent research shows how soil information can be generated quickly and cheaply, by using a state-of-the-art electromagnetic (EM) instrument and the inversion method to generate high-resolution EM conductivity images (EMCI). EM instruments have the advantages of being faster, less expensive, and also to collect data easier than the common Electrica...
Article
Full-text available
The Enxoé Reservoir was built in 1998. Since 2000, it has exhibited frequent high chlorophyll-a concentrations, reaching a geometric mean three times higher than the national limit for eutrophication, presenting the reservoir with the highest eutrophic state in Portugal. Toxic algal blooms have also often been observed, which pose serious challenge...
Article
Full-text available
Legacy soil data have been produced over 70 years in nearly all countries of the world. Unfortunately, data, information and knowledge are still currently fragmented and at risk of getting lost if they remain in a paper format. To process this legacy data into consistent, spatially explicit and continuous global soil information, data are being res...
Article
Nowadays there is an increasing effort for raising global awareness for the importance of soils to ensure food security, to improve agricultural and environmental planning and monitoring, and to establish effective and sustainable land management policies to counteract soil degradation. This study presents the INFOSOLO legacy database as the first...
Article
Full-text available
Enxoé is a small temporary river with a flushy regime, which flash floods carry significant loads to the reservoir. As a result, the reservoir, which supplies 25,000 inhabitants, exhibits a high trophic state and cyanobacteria blooms since its construction in 1998, with water abstractions requiring extensive treatment. This study aimed to understan...
Article
Full-text available
Soil salinization is a major soil degradation process. In Portugal, this problem is limited to marshes and some irrigated areas located in the south of the country. However, the increase of the irrigated area and the prospects of climate change for the coming decades, including rising temperatures, can lead to an increase of the degraded areain Por...
Article
The temporal variability of particulate (POC) and dissolved (DOC) organic carbon concentrations was analyzed in the Enxoé temporary river, southern Portugal, between September, 2010 and August, 2013. The overall aim was to study the variability of those elements during storm events, and determine their origin and the main transfer mechanisms to the...
Article
Limited knowledge of the hydraulic properties of semi-arid Cape Verde soils makes the use of water balance models difficult. In this paper, the water retention characteristics of agricultural soils of Santiago Island and the development of point pedotransfer functions (PTFs) to improve irrigation management are investigated. Soil water retention cu...
Article
Hydrological modellers have recently been challenged to improve watershed models by better integrating soil information into model applications. Reliable soil hydraulic information is thus necessary for better describing the water balance components at the catchment scale. Frequently, that information does not exist. This study presents a set of cl...
Book
Full-text available
There is a common need for reliable hydropedological information in Europe. In the last decades research institutes, universities and government agencies have developed local, regional and national datasets containing soil physical, chemical, hydrological and taxonomic information often combined with land use and landform data. A hydrological datab...
Article
Soil salinization and non-point source pollution are among the most important and widespread environmental problems in European Mediterranean regions. Sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench var. saccharatum) is a moderate to high salinity tolerant crop with low water and nutrient needs, seen as an alternative to grow in the water scarce regions...
Article
Full-text available
Diagnosing nutrient insufficiencies or toxicities in sorghum through foliar analysis is still scarce and mainly used for grain sorghum. The influence of the combinations of four nitrogen (N) rates with three sodium chloride (NaCl) rates on the leaf N, phosphorus (P), calcium (Ca), magnesium (Mg), potassium (K), and sodium (Na) concentrations of swe...
Article
The need for reducing irrigation water demand and non-point source pollution all across Europe has made sweet sorghum [Sorghum bicolor (L.) Moench], due to its lower water and nutrient requirements, an interesting alternative to other traditional summer crops in European Mediterranean regions. HYDRUS-2D was used to model the fate of nitrogen in a p...
Book
Full-text available
Population growth and increasing land use intensity lead to growing demands and exploitation of natural resources. Soils are among the most important and most endangered natural resource entities. In order to plan and implement sustainable soil management practices and to facilitate the rational exploitation of the resource, more detailed informati...
Article
Soil salinization, sodification, and non-point source pollution are among the most important and widespread environmental problems in agricultural regions with scarce water resources. Models evaluating these environmental problems should therefore consider an integrated approach to avoid favoring one problem over the other. The HYDRUS-1D software p...
Article
Soil texture influences significantly soil hydraulic properties, which due to soil heterogeneity normally present large spatial variability. The variability of soil retention θ(h), and hydraulic conductivity K(h) curves, in 11 of the 12 texture classes of the diagram of Gomes e Silva (1962) was studied. For each textural class, average, maximum, mi...
Article
Full-text available
We evaluated the influence of the combinations of four N levels with three NaCl levels, applied through irrigation, on leaf N, P, K, Ca, Mg, and Na concentrations of sweet sorghum (Sorghum bicolor ssp. saccharatum), in two consecutive years of an experiment established on a Eutric Fluvisol in Alvalade-Sado region, equipped with a drip irrigation sy...
Article
Full-text available
This paper presents the GS SOIL project, which is currently running under the eContemPlus European program. The overall project objectives are described, focusing on the contribution and adoption of the INSPIRE directive, in the soil thematic area (Annex III), by the EU countries. This document also presents the results and outcomes of the project...