Soil survey organizes the landscape into units with common soil properties, characteristics and classification. Soil survey units can be used to predict soil behavior and thus are useful for making management decisions and evaluating soil change. Traditionally, in the U.S., soil survey mapping concepts have been developed with the dominant use of the landscape in mind. Current enhancement of soil survey includes documenting dynamic soil properties and soil change due to ecosystem management as well as linking soil components phases to ecological sites. Ecological sites are a concept used to describe 'kinds of land' that have common potential kinds and amounts of vegetation and characteristic response to disturbance. Ecological site concepts have proven extremely useful for categorizing and managing native and naturalized systems. However, in intensively managed (agronomic) systems, inputs (e.g. energy, fertilizer, irrigation water) can confound and homogenize vegetation indicators often used to describe ecological states. Therefore, we propose expanding the notions of state and transition models, such that they can be differentiated based upon levels of soil function (indicated by dynamic soil properties) that occur as a result of the management (disturbance). The proposed model can be used as an organizational framework to provide information about both reference conditions and alternative management systems soil functions. The model provides a means of collecting and organizing information about soil potential (highest level of function as indicated by dynamic soil properties) for use in soil health and resource assessment. The model will be tested in an area of Northern Indiana with little native or naturalized vegetation. A matrix will be constructed of all possible management combinations (crop rotation x tillage) and systems will be generalized based on tiers of soil health and dynamic soil properties across decreasing spatial scales and increasing intensity. We expect this information to be conveyed through 'Agro-ecological Site Descriptions' that supplement the information currently available through Ecological Site Descriptions.
Oral presentation and poster titles, abstracts, and authors from the Society for Range Management (SRM) Annual Meetings and Tradeshows, from 2013 forward.