Effect of plough and conservation tillage on soil moisture in ecotone between farming and animal husbandry in north China

In the arid areas of ecotone between farming and animal husbandry in north China,soil water is crucial to the plant growing and vegetation restoration,so the conservation farming should be introduced.In order to evaluate the effect of different tillage types on soil moisture,the paper analyses the temporal and spatial variations of soil moisture under plough tillage and no-tillage.The soil moisture within 0-80cm was measured in two years.The results indicated: ① In general,the changes of soil moisture content corresponded to the amount of precipitation during the planting season.In addition,the soil moisture before sowing was also a vital element whatever the tillage type was.② The water storage capacity of no-tillage was more than plough tillage.There were two layers of spatial variations of soil profile moisture within 0~80 cm: water loss layer within 0~30 cm and water storage layer within 30~80 cm.③ With SPSS software to simulate the relationship between soil moisture content and soil depth,the correlation was obvious and the equation type was cubic parabola curve.