Abstract

Land degradation is serious global environmental problem affect land productivity. The decline of land productivity posed a negative impact on the individual and the economy of the Ethiopia as a whole. Land degradation had a serious impact on farmer’s livelihood of wera district due to inappropriate land use and land management practices. Construction of physical SWC structures is crucial option to improve soil moisture status and other soil properties that increase land productivity. The experiment was conducted for three consecutive years in moisture conservation structures in moisture stressed dry area of Southern Ethiopia. The evaluation were made on four treatments physical SWC structures; micro basin, eyebrow basin, micro-trench and traditional pit. The treatments are replicated three times. Soil samples before and after the trial, soil moisture conservation and test tree data were collected for analysis. Except pH and soil texture some soil properties like; TN, P, OM, OC showed an improvement due to the SWC structures implementation. In the first year of trial there was no significant difference was observed soil moisture, plant height and collar diameter. In the second year of the trial highly significant variation at (p<0.05) was observed in soil moisture conservation percent. Micro-trench conserved the higher percent of moisture than other structures. In the third year only plant height show significant difference, but the others were not statistically significant. The result depicts that implementation of physical SWC structures are very important to conserve soil moisture at dry areas. Therefore, all stake holders should practice construction physical structure integrated with tree for land rehabilitation and alleviate soil moisture stress.