Cover-management factor and soil and water losses from eucalyptus cultivation and Atlantic Forest at the Coastal Plain in the Espirito Santo State, Brazil

Water erosion plays a key role on soil and water losses on agricultural land. Studies about this kind of losses from eucalyptus cultivation are still rare across the country. Thus, this work aimed to quantify soil and water losses by water erosion in the eucalyptus production forest, native forest (Atlantic Forest), and bare soil, for main soil classes at the Brazilian Coastal Plain region, between November 1997 and March 2004. The work also aimed to estimate the cover-management factor for the above environments. The experiment was carried out in Yellow Argisol medium/clayey texture (PA1), Dystrophic Haplic Plinthosol (FX), and Yellow Argisol moderately rocky (PA2), under the above conditions. The average soil losses by water erosion ranged from 0.04 to 25.55 Mg ha(-1) year(-1) for the Atlantic Forest (FX) and bare soil (PA2). This same trend was observed for water losses. The C factor value found in eucalyptus and Atlantic Forest was 0.30 and 0.02, respectively. Soil losses from eucalyptus cultivation were lower than tolerable soil losses for each soil class. Such soil losses were relatively close to those found in the natural system, indicating the sustainability of that environment in the water erosion context.