Kajian Kualitas Tanah Ultisol pada Beberapa Tipe Penggunaan Lahan di Desa Gunung Meriah Kecamatan Gunung Meriah

Abstract

Gunung Meriah Village, located in Gunung Meriah District, Deli Serdang Regency, North Sumatra, is one of the villages where most of the people work as farmers on forest land converted into agricultural land, with the topography of the area dominated by sloping to steep. The soil in Gunung Meriah Subdistrict is mostly Ultisol soil type which has the characteristics of less fertile soil and is prone to erosion. Farmers in Gunung Meriah Village often lose money from their agricultural products, mostly due to a lack of knowledge about sustainable and environmentally friendly agricultural cultivation, cultivation techniques that have not been achieved, plus the land used is forest conversion land with Ultisol, adding many factors that cause farmers to lose money from their agricultural products. This study aims to assess soil quality on agricultural land in Gunung Meriah Village and compare it with primary forest land and secondary forest land. This research is descriptive exploratory, with a field survey approach, and supported by soil analysis in the laboratory. The method used in this research is the free grid survey method with sampling in this study using the Simple Random Sampling technique, with three composite sample points. Soil samples were taken at 8 points with a depth of 0-20 cm. The analysis of soil samples carried out is soil texture, content density, porosity, cation exchange capacity, C-organic, pH, N total, P-available, base saturation, and total microbes. Then proceed to describe the results of the study by assessing soil quality using the Minimum Data Set (MDS) method according to Lal, (1994) on each indicator. The results showed that primary forest land and secondary forest land had a good soil quality index, while dryland agriculture had a poor soil quality index, and mixed dryland agriculture had a poor to moderate soil quality index. In dryland agriculture and mixed dryland agriculture land use types, there are three parameters that have extreme limiting factors in almost all samples, namely the parameters of cation exchange capacity (CEC), base saturation (BS), and P-available. The conversion of forest land into agricultural land in Gunung Meriah Village has caused a decrease in soil quality in Gunung Meriah Village