Impact of Land Use Change and Afforestation on Soil Properties in a Mediterranean Mountain Area of Central Spain

Afforestation can improve hydrological processes, such as infiltration, in basins and, therefore, reduce the impact on human populations of floods, soil erosion, landslides, droughts, and climate variation. The aim this work was to analyze how afforestation other changes land use influence infiltrability evolution soils. Infiltration rates, water repellency, physical chemical properties sandy loam soils were measured four types land: native holm oak forest, afforested 20-year-old pine shrubs, grasslands. Non-forest covers are result degradation forests for centuries, while study took place a perennial wet mountain pasture (cervunalito). Our results show that infiltration rates much higher areas (857.67 mm·h−1) than forest (660.67 mm·h−1), grasslands (280.00 or shrubs (271.67 mm·h−1). No statistically significant differences fertility, organic matter content, bulk density, effective porosity found between cover; however, improved drainage soil, its rate forest.