Jornada LTER Phosphorus Shifts Along a Desert Soil Chronosequence

These data were collected as part of the Critical Zone Network REU and the UTEP Chihuahuan Desert Biodiversity REU programs in the Summer of 2023.
Soil samples were collected from two depths (0-10cm and 10-20cm) at four sites of varying soil age along a desert soil chronosequence in the Jornada Basin Long Term Ecological Research Range to measure a suite of phosphorus pools and pedogenic carbonate abundance. Our sampling locations mirrored those of Lajtha and Schlesinger (1988), which also measured phosphorus cycling and availability. Our study expanded on this work by considering biologically accessible P fractions and their relationships to calcium carbonate. We measured available P using the Olsen-P method, and biologically accessible pools were measured using the Biologically Based Phosphorus method from DeLuca et al. 2015. This method emulates strategies employed by plants and microbes to access different fractions of P in the soil.