ResearchArticle Impact of Soil and Water Conservation Measures and Slope Position on Selected Soil Attributes at a Watershed Scale Melaku Alene Retta, 1 Hailu Kendie Addis , 2 and Tesfaye Feyisa Beyene 2 1 DebreTaborUniversity,SoilScience,DebraTabor,SouthGondar,Ethiopia 2 AmharaRegionalAgriculturalResearchInstitute,SoilandWaterResearchDirectorate,Bahir-Dar,Ethiopia Correspondence should be addressed to Hailu Kendie Addis; hailukendie@gmail.com Received 26 November 2021; Revised 16 March 2022; Accepted 18 March 2022; Published 7 April 2022 Academic Editor: Fedor Lisetskii Copyright © 2022 Melaku Alene Retta et al. is is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. e Ethiopian highlands are affected by soil erosion resulting in the deterioration of soil properties. To reverse this, different soil and water conservation (SWC) measures were spatially practiced; however, the effect of SWC and slope gradient on soil properties is not well studied in the area. Hence, this study was conducted to evaluate the effects of SWC and slope gradient on selected soil physicochemical properties in Dawnt watershed, northwestern Ethiopia. e treatments were a combination of four different SWC measures on three slope gradients replicated at three sites. Disturbed and undisturbed soil samples were collected from 0–20 cm soil depth, and physicochemical properties were determined following standard laboratory procedures. e laboratory results depict that sand, bulk density, moisture, particle density, porosity, pH, organic carbon (OC), cation exchange capacity (CEC), total nitrogen, and available phosphorus were significantly (P < 0.05) affected by SWC measures and slope gradient. High OC (2.44%), CEC (45 cmol (+) kg −1 ), and moisture (19.55%) were obtained from stone-faced soil bund stabilized with grass (SFSBG) and higher available phosphorus (7.83ppm) from soil bund (SB), while lower bulk density (1.13 gm/cm 3 ) was obtained from SFSBG. Additionally, higher clay (41.67%) and moisture (19.81%), and lower bulk density (1.14g·cm −3 ) were obtained from the lower slope. Higher pH (6.75) and OC (2.89%) were recorded at the lower slope under SFSBG and lower pH and OC (6.03 and 1.02%) at the upper slope with nonconserved. Soil chemical properties, except available potassium, were increased down the slope. e interactions of slope position and SWC measures affect soil texture, pH, organic carbon, and available phosphorus but not affect soil bulk density, moisture content, particle density, total porosity, cation exchange capacity, total nitrogen, and available potassium. In general, the soil properties were improved through integrating conservation practices with multipurpose grass species across the study watershed. erefore, it is possible to infer that SFSBG measures improve the observed physicochemical soil properties, which urge for the maintenance and the development of SWC measures in the study watershed as well as nearby highlands with similar topographic conditions and agroclimatic characteristics. 1. Introduction Humans derive more than 99.7% of their food from the land and less than 0.3% from the ocean and aquatic ecosystem [1]. us, preserving cropland and maintaining soil fertility and productivity should be of the highest significance to human prosperity [2]. About 10 million hectares of cropland are lost each year due to soil erosion, which leads to a reduction in crop yield and food production worldwide [3]. According to Lal [1], two-thirds of the world’s population is malnourished as a result of cropland productivity reduction. Similarly, Pimentel and Burgess [3] reported that soil was being de- graded 10 to 40 times faster from the agricultural lands than the rate of soil formation. e major causes of land deg- radation in Ethiopia are rapid population increase, defor- estation, low vegetative cover, and unbalanced crop and livestock production [4]. Generally, natural resource deg- radation is the main environmental problem in the country [5]. e majority of farmers in Ethiopia are subsistence- oriented, cultivating sloppy lands that are susceptible to soil erosion [6]. Crop production is inhibited not only by low Hindawi Applied and Environmental Soil Science Volume 2022, Article ID 9743511, 11 pages https://doi.org/10.1155/2022/9743511