Division: Special Sessions

Title: Symposium--Soil and Plant Interactions in the Built Environment – Identifying Unifying Themes Across Plant Community Types

Lead Community Sponsor:
Cosponsor: Urban and Anthropogenic Soils, Environmental Quality, Forest, Range & Wildland Soils, Wetland Soils
Community Cosponsor: Biochar: Agronomic and Environmental Uses Community, Biochar: Agronomic and Environmental Uses Community
Format: Oral Symposium
Keywords:

Session Description: Urban lands are rapidly increasing and more people live in cities now than ever before. Urbanization and anthropogenic disturbances dramatically alter ecosystem functioning of these systems. Understanding the interactions of plants and soils in the built environment is imperative to our society in an ever-urbanizing world. Urban soils and plants have significant environmental, economic and social values. The establishment, growth, health, and longevity of plants in the built environment are often dependent upon soil quality. Due to anthropogenic disturbances and inherent heterogeneity of urban landscapes, these soils pose unique challenges as substrates for plants. The variety of plant-soil systems found in urban areas is diverse, ranging from highly manicured turfgrass to natural woodlands within the urban area. However, unifying themes, such as ecosystem services and socioeconomic concerns may cut across the heterogeneous plant-soil systems found in the built environment. Accordingly, there is a need to identify and pursue scientific inquiry contributing to our understanding of the broader built environment and the plant-soil interactions that transcend the various vegetative communities. This special session is intended to synthesize the current state of the science for soil and plant interactions in each of the following five urban plant-soil systems: landscape plantings, turfgrass, agronomic plants, wetlands, and natural areas. Each of the five presentations will address three specific topics: 1) ecosystem services of their soils and plants, 2) managing soil quality for their plants, and 3) environmental and socioeconomic concerns relating to their plants and soils. The special session will conclude with a presentation that will attempt to coalesce knowledge of the broader urban plant-soil community. A discussion period will follow that will be directed towards ideas for identifying future directions for this topic area.

Reviewer's Comments: