PARENT SESSION
Wednesday, August 9, 5:00-6:30 pm
Poster Session 18 - Forest ecology and management
Exhibit Hall, Ballroom Level, Cook Convention Center
Patterns of soil acidity and base saturation 14 to 40 years following liming in northern hardwood sites in New York, Massachusetts, Vermont, and New Hampshire.
Yanai, Ruth1, Lilly, Paul2, Park, Byung Bae1, 1 State University of New York, College of Environmental Science and Forestry, Syracuse, NY2 University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
ABSTRACT- Soil acidity and base saturation are presumed to be changing due to acid rain, but it is difficult to measure small rates of change at the present time. We analyzed soils collected from four sites at which liming experiments had been conducted 14 to 41 years earlier: Woods Lake, NY, Harvard Forest, MA, Proctor Maple Research Center, VT, and Bartlett Experimental Forest, NH. Various effects of liming persisted at all sites, as indicated by pH, total and effective CEC, exchangeable cations, exchangeable and total acidity, organically bound aluminum and effective pKa of the exchange complex, but the magnitude of the effects differed by site. We expected to find higher soil N concentrations in limed sites, according to relationships reported from agricultural soils. Instead, we found higher N in controls, especially in the Oe horizon (p=0.03), which suggests that contemporary observations of soil N increases might be due to indirect effects of soil acidification and not just to atmospheric deposition of N.
Key words: forest soil, acidity, calcium