CCZO -- Soil Gas -- Research areas 1, 4, 7 -- (2015-2017)

Zachary Brecheisen, with help from Dan Richter, Will Cook, Alex Cherkinsky, Jay Austin, and others, have augered and installed soil gas wells at 4 depths at 15 locations in the Calhoun CZO. Most installation occurred in the summer of 2015 and completed in summer 2016. Gas sampling of existing wells commenced 7-31-15 and has proceeded approximately every 3 weeks since then. The gas wells target 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 years old, and 1 pseudo-replicated agricultural plot which has been, to the best of our knowledge, continually cultivated from the 1930s at the latest. The goal of this sampling is to identify anthropogenic biogeochemical signals in the deep soil profile of cultivated lands and to evaluate their persistence or lack thereof in old-field pine forests relative to reference hardwoods. Soil gas is analyzed in the field for O2 using an Apogee oxygen meter and CO2 with a Vaisala meter. Other (greenhouse) gasses are brought back to the lab, where they are analyzed on a Varian gas chromatograph with known concentration standards.
Date Range Comments: samples collected and analyzed approximately every 3 weeks; ongoing