Campus Units
Agronomy, Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
2020
Journal or Book Title
Soil Science Society of America Journal
Volume
84
Issue
2
First Page
568
Last Page
586
DOI
10.1002/saj2.20007
Abstract
The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) is a U.S. federal land conservation program that incentivizes grassland reestablishment on marginal lands. Although this program has many environmental benefits, two critical questions remain: does reestablishing grasslands via CRP also result in soil health recovery, and what parts of restored fields (i.e., topographic positions) recover the fastest? We hypothesized that soil health will recover over time after converting cropland to CRP grassland and that recovery will be greatest at higher topographic positions. To test this, we sampled 241 midwestern U.S. soils along a grassland chronosequence (0–40 yr, including native grasslands) and at four topographic positions (i.e., a chronotoposequence). Soils were measured for bulk density, maximum water holding capacity (MWHC), soil organic C (SOC), extractable inorganic N, potentially mineralizable C (PMC), and N. Native grasslands had superior soil health compared with cropland and most CRP soils, and even 40 yr since grassland reestablishment was not adequate for full soil health recovery. Topographic position strongly influenced soil health indicators and often masked any CRP effect, especially with MWHC and SOC. However, PMC (a measure of active C) responded most rapidly to CRP and consistently across the landscape and was 26–34% greater 19–40 yr after grassland reestablishment. Reestablishing grasslands through CRP can improve soil health, although topographic position regulates the recovery, with greatest improvements at shoulder slope positions. Patience is needed to observe changes in soil health, even in response to a drastic management change like conversion of cropland to CRP grassland.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Copyright Owner
The Authors
Copyright Date
2020
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Recommended Citation
De, Mriganka; Riopel, Jason A.; Cihacek, Larry J.; Lawrinenko, Michael; Baldwin-Kordick, Rebecca; Hall, Steven J.; and McDaniel, Marshall D., "Soil health recovery after grassland reestablishment on cropland: The effects of time and topographic position" (2020). Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology Publications. 386.
https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/eeob_ag_pubs/386
Included in
Agriculture Commons, Agronomy and Crop Sciences Commons, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Commons, Soil Science Commons
Comments
This article is published as De, Mriganka, Jason A. Riopel, Larry J. Cihacek, Michael Lawrinenko, Rebecca Baldwin‐Kordick, Steven J. Hall, and Marshall D. McDaniel. "Soil health recovery after grassland reestablishment on cropland–the effects of time and topographic position." Soil Science Society of America Journal 84 (2020): 568-586. doi: 10.1002/saj2.20007.