Analysis of Change in Soil Fungal-Bacterial Ratio and Physical Soil Parameters over Time on a Rotational Grazing System in Cornell, WI.

The study takes place on a farm in Cornell, Wisconsin that is currently undergoing changes to become 100 percent rotationally grazed, switching over from conventional farming. Currently, they have fields that are being farmed conventionally, seeded 1 and 2 years, and a long term continuous grazed pasture. The converted fields have been seeded down with a mixture of meadow fescue, timothy, festulolium, and red and white clover. This study aims to measure the changes in the microbial community over time on these 4 fields using a randomized block design. Each field will be split into 12 sections for sampling. In each of the 12 sections a composite sample composed of 10 cores at 3 inch depth for microbial analysis and 6 inch depth for physico-chemical properties will be taken to encompass the heterogeneity of the samples in each section.

The significance of this study is to determine how both the microbial community and physicochemical properties of soil responds after changing from a conventional to rotational grazing setting. This study consists of fields that were planted at different times allowing us to analyze how the microbial community progresses over time, along with other physical and chemical qualities. Little attention has been given to fungal bacterial ratios in rotational grazing operations. A lot of research has been done showing that microbial communities will shift from a bacterial to a fungal dominated community after tillage practices have been reduced, although fungal and bacterial dominance is not always in line with general expectations. This means that conflicting differences are still found from study to study creating a need for more precise and relative data. To resolve this question, we aim to provide another study looking at soil management effects on fungal to bacterial ratio. What we are looking to do is to provide more data on fungal to bacterial ratios in a managed grazing setting along with investigating a rate at which the fungal and bacterial communities change over time in the seeded fields compared to conventional and long term grazed fields.