Litholic soils are characterized by moderate to high erodibility and low depth. Due to these attributes, litholic soils require effective conservation practices protecting their thin top soil layer from the high erosion rates in the semiarid regions of the State of Ceará, Brazil. While the consequences of erosion on these soils are well known, the long term effects of this conservation practice on the rate of soil losses and improvement of their properties have been scarcely studied. Mass of retained sediment and changes in chemical, physical and topographical characteristics of a litholic soil were determined thirteen years after the construction of stone barrier contours. The experiment was conducted in Quixadá, State of Ceará, Brazil, from March to July, 1994. In a 0.03 m m-1 slope, an average of 60 ton ha-1 yr-1 of sediment was retained on layers up to 0.30 m deep along the stone barriers. Deposition induced by those obstacles to runoff progressively formed bench terraces through natural levelling of the original terrain surface. This conservation practice induced significant improvements in soil quality, increasing effective depth, porosity, available water, organic matter, nitrogen, sum of bases, base saturation and cation-exchange capacity and decreasing aluminum content.
sediment; erosion control; bench terraces; soil quality