Integrating soil analyses with frameworks for ecosystem services and organizational hierarchy of soil systems

ABSTRACT

Ecosystems provide various goods and services (provisioning, regulating, cultural, and supporting) that benefit humans both directly and indirectly. Soil plays an important role in ecosystem services therefore soil analyses can provide quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate ecosystem goods and services. Soil analyses must be integrated with the frameworks for ecosystem services and existing organizational hierarchy of soil systems to provide missing links to scale, time, degree of computation and complexity. This case study demonstrates the importance of evaluating soil organic carbon (SOC) within this newly proposed context using glaciated soils at the Cornell University Willsboro Research Farm in upstate New York as the example. The vertical distribu tion of SOC was analyzed quantitatively by soil depth class (topsoil versus subsoil), soil order, and other relevant variables that relate to the organizational hierarchy of soil systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Carbon
• depth
• order
• organic
• scale
• vertical

Acknowledgments

Technical Contribution No. 6404 of the Clemson University Experiment Station. This material is based upon work supported by NIFA/USDA, under projects: SC-1700541.