Compacted microcatchments with local earth materials for rainwater harvesting in the semiarid region of China

Low cost microcatchment treatments for rainwater harvesting are needed under the local poor economic conditions in the semiarid loess regions of northwest China. This paper was intended to study the effectiveness of runoff yield from compacted catchments with some local earth materials under the natural rainfall. The compacted catchments were constructed with uniformly mixed loess, laterite and fine sand at the ratio of 1:1:1. The results showed that rainfall–runoff efficiency from such compacted plots was 33% of the total rainfall as compared to 8.7% from the untreated plots. The compacted catchments had low infiltration rate, and the minimum precipitation required to produce runoff (threshold rainfall) was 4 mm under no antecedent rainfall effects and 1.9 mm under antecedent rainfall effects. In contrast, the threshold rainfall was about 8.5 mm for the untreated catchments under no antecedent rainfall effects and 6 mm under antecedent rainfall effects. The compacted catchment with local soils has a great potential for rainfall harvesting in the semiarid regions of China, but soil erosion is a problem, some form of soil stabilization would be needed in future use.