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- Title
Arrested Development of Soil on Alvars of Ontario, Canada: Implications for Conservation and Restoration.
- Authors
Stark, Kaeli E.; Lundholm, Jeremy T.; Larson, Douglas W.
- Abstract
Alvars are habitats of high conservation priority but little effort has been made to characterize their soil properties or describe the successional processes that maintain these rocky, open habitats. We measured physical and chemical properties of soils on five alvar sites representing ancient and recent age classes in Bruce Peninsula National Park, Ontario, Canada. While soils normally develop over time, we found that the soils on sites recently disturbed by fire were chemically and physically indistinguishable from those of ancient undisturbed sites. On both ancient and young sites, the soils are shallow, alkaline but dominated by silica sand, high in organic matter, and characterized by a very low bulk density. In addition, they are low in phosphorus but high in nitrogen, magnesium, and calcium. The results represent the soil reference state for one of the most common types of alvar in Canada. Additionally, the results suggest that the restoration of fully degraded alvars should begin by amending the site with sand enriched with organic matter.
- Subjects
ONTARIO; CANADA; SOILS; SOIL conservation; RESTORATION ecology; ALVAR regions; STEPPES
- Publication
Natural Areas Journal, 2004, Vol 24, Issue 2, p95
- ISSN
0885-8608
- Publication type
Article