A Study of Precipitation Effect on Acid Neutralizing Capacity of Soil

Precipitation is a well known phenomenon. If the pH of it is less than 5.6 precipitations are considered as acidic else it is alkaline. Basically soil is alkaline in nature. Recently man’s activities have increased emissions of oxides of nitrogen and sulphur results in increase in acidity of atmosphere. When these gases react with different elements in the atmosphere the acids are re-introduced via precipitation and intercept by the soil surface. Hence the purpose of this paper is to study the hydro-geological characteristics of the soil and to examine potential effect of various precipitation chemistry on pH and Acid Neutralizing Capacity of the top soil. Bangalore urban area (Peenya and Hebbal area in north and Jayanagar area in south) and Mandya city was selected as study area and for the analysis purpose 18 suitable sampling points were selected in the vicinity (<50cm) of installed rain gauge station and grab soil sampling was done in monthly intervals at 30 m top soil using core cutters. As per the obtained results and data collected no much variation was found in Hydro-geological characteristics and pH of soil wherein all soil is alkaline in nature (6.97-Bangalore North, 7.25Bangalore south and 7.78 in Mandya urban). Acid Neutralizing Capacity of Banglore north and south is 11.97 meq/100g, 14.96 mg/l respectively and whereas in Mandya it is 16.42 meq/100 g. Because of continuous acid deposition on top soil, Bangalore urban area possesses lesser Acid Neutralizing Capacity. Though it hasn’t lost its complete capacity, successive falling of acid rain on it will expected to cause considerable decrease in its Acid neutralizing capacity and will cause detrimental changes in soil property increasing the acid content in the top soil.