Division: SSSA Division: Pedology

Title: Symposium--Ecological Sites: A Concept for Integrating Vegetation and Soils Information: I

Lead Community Sponsor:
Cosponsor: Forest, Range & Wildland Soils
Community Cosponsor: Soil Carbon and Greenhouse Gas Emissions Community
Format: Oral Symposium
Keywords: Ecological sitesSoil CarbonSoil Quality

Session Description: Ecological site concepts have been widely used in forests and rangelands and are being extended into wetlands, subaqueous soils, and highly managed lands. In historic forestry literature, productivity was largely considered an inherent property of the site, i.e., the integration of biological, edaphic, geomorphologic, and climate factors of the environment. In contemporary rangeland literature an ecological site is defined as land that produces a characteristic kind and amount of vegetation and responds similarly to management and disturbance. Potential and on-going research in this area include using ecological sites to: evaluate how management inputs interact with inherent site properties; document change in landscapes affected by hydrocarbon development (oil/gas/fracking and the associated infrastructure); characterize outcomes in semi-arid rangelands after fire, climate change and other vegetation disturbance; elucidate management units for subaqueous soils; and organize dynamic soil property information by crop production and management regimes.

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Reviewer's Comments: