OOS 29-8 - Soils of urban woodlands

Thursday, August 11, 2016: 10:10 AM
Grand Floridian Blrm G, Ft Lauderdale Convention Center
Ian D. Yesilonis, USDA Forest Service, Baltimore, MD and Richard Pouyat, Chesapeake Bay Career Consulting
Background/Question/Methods

Urban environments affect soils and their ecosystem services through physical mixing and scalping, nutrient and metal deposition, invasive vegetation and fauna, and heat-island effects.  These external forces reduce the predictability of soil properties compared to natural topo-sequences such as upland, mid-slope, and lowland.  Urban soils support land uses and covers that range from highly managed residential turf grass, to highly disturbed and unmanaged vacant lots, to remnant or regenerating forest patches, which contain vegetation specific for the local biome and are found in different shapes and sizes within urbanized landscapes.  Remnant soils embedded in urban or peri-urban landscapes are potentially impacted by urban environmental stressors.  Are these soils chemically, physically, and biologically distinct from soils under different land uses or are they similar due to urban soil mixing and grading?  How do these urban remnant urban soils differ from soils in rural areas under the same land cover? 

Results/Conclusions

To answer these questions, we will examine various datasets related to physical, chemical, and biological soil properties such as carbon and nitrogen dynamics conducted in Baltimore, MD.