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Thesis
Soil health in Northwest Florida: the effects of agricultural land use
University of West Florida,
Master of Science (MS), University of West Florida
2021
Abstract
The conversion of land for agriculture is known to degrade certain characteristics of soil health, but the rate of change is not described in detail. Northwest Florida offers the opportunity to study soils that have been converted to agriculture over varying timescales to provide insight into (a) the rate of change of soil health indicators; (b) the minimum time needed for significant impacts to develop; and (c) the magnitude of change that results from conversion to agriculture. Samples were analyzed to quantify the effect of conversion from pine forest to agriculture on soil pH, electrical conductivity, particle size, carbon content, aggregate stability, soil respiration, color, and bulk density. With the exclusion of the 30 series soils from the dataset, carbon content, electrical conductivity, and silt content had relatively linear trends over time (R² > 0.6). When including this series, no trendline had an R² > 0.2. Aggregate stability, pH, carbon content, bulk density, and clay content were all significantly different between land uses after 33.5 years of agriculture, silt content after 75 years. The overall differences between land uses are significant for every soil characteristic tested except sand content, demonstrating the impact that agricultural management has on soil conditions.
Details
- Title
- Soil health in Northwest Florida
- Resource Type
- Thesis
- Publisher
- University of West Florida,; Pensacola, Florida :
- Format
- text;electronic resource;remote;computer;online resource
- Number of pages
- 1 online resource (ix, 89 leaves : illustrations, charts)
- Copyright
- http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/
- Identifiers
- 99380090840306600
- Academic Unit
- Hal Marcus College of Science and Engineering
- Language
- English
- Awarding Institution
- University of West Florida; Master of Science (MS)
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Science (MS), University of West Florida