Baseline Assessment of Dynamic Properties and Soil Resilience at Lawrence Woods State Nature Preserve.

As the world’s population continues to grow and food security issues intensify, so do concerns about soil resilience and soil quality. The term soil resilience refers to a soil’s ability to recover following a disturbance.  This relates to soil quality in terms of recovery of those soil functions that sustain biological activity, maintain environmental quality, and promote plant and animal health. A major challenge faced by those in this field of study is constructing a quantitative framework to measure and monitor soil resilience. The study site, Lawrence Woods State Nature Preserve, consists of two major soil series, Blount (Bo) and Pewamo (Pm), and four major areas of differing land use, including the forest (Fr), two agricultural plots that are no longer managed for cultivation (Ag1 and Ag2), and an agricultural plot currently under cultivation (C). A factorial sampling design was used and a suite of physical, chemical, and biological properties were analyzed to establish baseline measurements and to also determine which of those properties served as the best dynamic indicators of resilience.  An analysis of variance was performed to determine if the difference between the properties and land uses was significant.  Through the data analysis, five properties were selected to be included in a resilience index as they were most indicative of disturbance for the Lawrence Woods site. The five properties that were selected as the best indicators of resilience included hydraulic conductivity, soil microbial biomass, % clay, bulk density, and average % total carbon.  The indicators were ranked using a scoring system from (0-1) and weighted based on the data. This facilitated the construction of a framework for assessing soil resilience.  It was hypothesized that the most degraded soils (Ag1) would have the lowest resilience ratings compared with the less degraded soils including (Ag2) and the forest (Fr).