Soil Organic Matter Rate Inside the Jessours Soil in the Matmata Mountainous Region

For centuries, water and soil conservation techniques have been developed by southern Tunisian society to valorize arid lands under harsh and irregular climatic conditions and to maintain a sustainable agriculture in these regions. A Jesser is a small earth dam, sometimes consolidated by a dry stone wall. The Jesser closes the thalwegs of the gullies in which they are located (Fig. 1). They form flat topsoil, concentrating on flows and preserving water and soil. They usually contain a central or lateral weir, sometimes several, whose function is to evacuate the overflow towards the plots downstream and to protect the system from destruction [1‐3]. The study aims to establish the percentage of organic matter and texture of soils in three Jessours through chemical and physical analyses in various depths: 0–20, 20–40 and 40–60 cm and to see the role of this technique in the maintenance of a sustainable agriculture. The physical analyses showed that the texture of soils is loam-sandy for Jessours 1, 2, while it is sandy-loam for the Jesser 3 (Fig. 1). Chemical analyses illustrated that the rate of organic matter is lower than 1% for the three hydraulic units.