CCZO -- Soil Porosity, Soil Invertebrates -- Calhoun CZO -- (2015-2017)

Zachary Brecheisen, Dan Richter, Mac Callaham, Will Cook, and Paul Heine have sampled and analyzed soils from 15 locations in the Calhoun CZO. Sampling is underway, though all soil texture samples have been collected and are in process. The first quarterly invertebrate sampling occurred in September 2015. Bulk density, Ksat, and water stable aggregate sampling and analyses will occur in 2016. This work targets 3 different land forms: flat uplands, mid-slopes, and steeper slopes in 3 different land use comparisons. The land uses consist of 3 reference hardwood forests minimally degraded by human activity, 3 old-field secondary succession pine forests >60 yo, and 1 pseudo-replicated agricultural plot which has been, to the best of our knowledge, continually cultivated from the 1930’s at the latest. The goal of this sampling is to identify physical anthropogenic signals in the upper meters in the soil profile of cultivated lands and to evaluate their persistence or lack thereof in old-field pine forests relative to reference hardwoods.