Sustainable agricultural intensificationhas been considered one of the solutions for increasing food production and mitigating climate changes. Nevertheless, soil physical degradation induced by intense mechanization may threaten those benefits in large-scale agricultural regions such as the Brazilian Cerrado. Thus, our study aimed to assess the effects of land use, tillage management, and crop diversification on soil physical quality of two long-term experiments in Cerrado through on-farm visual evaluation of soil structure (VESS) and soil physical parameters. Soil sampling was performed in 0-to-10- and 10-to-20-cm layers of four agricultural systems: soybean [Glycine max (L.) Merr.]–fallow under conventional tillage (SF); soybean–fallow under no-till (SN); soybean–maize (Zea mays L.) succession under no-till (SM); and crop rotation under no-till including soybean, maize, grasses, and legumes (CR). An additional area of native Cerrado vegetation (NV) was included as reference. Land transition from Cerrado to agricultural systems declined the soil physical quality, detected by VESS assessment and physical parameters in both layers. Tillage management did not alter soil physical parameters, which was likely associated with the medium time adoption in the experiments (9 yr) and high resilience capacity of clayey Oxisols. Unexpectedly, SM and CR negatively affected the porosity- and water-associated soil parameters in the 10-to-20-cm layer compared with SN. It suggests that the soil physical damage induced by higher frequency of machinery operations required to manage a more diverse crop sequence may prevail over the benefits provided by crop diversification. Finally, this study highlights that intensified agricultural systems need to be coupled with strategies to reduce and/or control intensive machinery traffic.

中文翻译：

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土地利用、耕作管理和作物多样化对塞拉多农业系统土壤物理质量的影响

可持续农业集约化被认为是增加粮食产量和减缓气候变化的解决方案之一。然而，密集机械化导致的土壤物理退化可能会威胁到巴西塞拉多等大规模农业地区的这些好处。因此，我们的研究旨在通过对土壤结构 (VESS) 和土壤物理参数的农场视觉评估，评估土地利用、耕作管理和作物多样化对塞拉多两个长期试验的土壤物理质量的影响。在四种农业系统的 0 到 10 厘米和 10 到 20 厘米的层中进行了土壤采样：大豆 [甘氨酸最大值(L.) Merr.]-常规耕作 (SF) 下的休耕；大豆——免耕（SN）；大豆-玉米（Zea maysL.) 免耕继承 (SM)；和免耕作物轮作，包括大豆、玉米、草和豆类 (CR)。一个额外的本地塞拉多植被 (NV) 区域被包括在内作为参考。通过 VESS 评估和两个层的物理参数检测到，从塞拉多到农业系统的土地过渡降低了土壤物理质量。耕作管理没有改变土壤物​​理参数，这可能与实验中采用的中等时间（9 年）和粘土质氧化土的高恢复能力有关。出乎意料的是，与 SN 相比，SM 和 CR 对 10 至 20 厘米层中的孔隙度和水相关土壤参数产生了负面影响。它表明，管理更多样化的作物序列所需的更高频率的机械操作引起的土壤物理损害可能胜过作物多样化提供的好处。最后，本研究强调，集约化农业系统需要与减少和/或控制集约化机械交通的战略相结合。