Edafología. Volumen 7-1. Abril 2000. pág 97-106.

Abstract

Soil erosion is very intense under bare o scarcely covered soils. There, the vegetation should be improved by restoration, mainly on abandoned fields, road embankments, burned soil and mine spoils. Nowadays, seed sowing is the more appropriate, inexpensive, and fast technique, although the sur-face wash and the splash can remove the seeds after sowing. Nevertheless there were no research focus-sed on this topic. As a preliminary approach, seeds from 46 species were selected from open environ-ments of the East and Southeast of the Iberian Peninsula. The seed ranged in size from 0,04 mg of Sedum sediforme and 70 mg of Prunus mahaleb. Simulated rainfall at 55,8 mm h -1 was performed under labo-ratory conditions. The results demonstrate that the length, the width, the surface, and the volume of seeds affects negatively on the seed removal rates. More complex indexes, which represent the form of the seeds such as the Flatness Index or the Circle Index did not show any statistic relationship with the seed losses.

Key words: Erosion, Seeds, Size, Form, Simulated rainfall, Laboratory.