PARENT SESSION
Poster Session #66: Landscape Ecology II.
Friday, August 9. Presentation from 8:00 AM to 9:30 AM. Exhibit Hall B & C, TCC

A GIS model of soil processes for arid land management.

Killgore, Aaron^*,1, Whitford, Walter², ¹ Department of Fishery and Wildlife Sciences, Las Cruces, NM² USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, Las Cruces, NM

ABSTRACT- There is a growing need at the state and federal management agency level to make decisions based on ecological processes across the landscape. Arid and semi-arid lands around the world are thought to be best understood in terms of their soil resources. One soil process that influences water infiltration and storage, soil structure, and plant recruitment is biopedoturbation. These movements of soil by animals were monitored on plots established in dominant vegetation and soil types on the USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range over a three-year period. We analyzed the results in a spatially-explicit GIS model that predicts seasonal abundances and types of disturbances throughout the Dona Ana basin.

KEY WORDS: biopedoturbation, landscape ecology, soil ecology, GIS ecological process models