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SPATIAL FOREST SOIL PROPERTIES FOR ECOLOGICAL MODELING IN THE WESTERN OREGON CASCADES
Citation:
Kern, J. S., D. S. Shank, AND M G. Johnson. SPATIAL FOREST SOIL PROPERTIES FOR ECOLOGICAL MODELING IN THE WESTERN OREGON CASCADES. Presented at Annual meeting of the Soil Science Society of America, Charlotte, NC, October 21-25, 2001.
Description:
The ultimate objective of this work is to provide a spatially distributed database of soil properties to serve as inputs to model ecological processes in western forests at the landscape scale. The Central Western Oregon Cascades are rich in biodiversity and they are a fascinating place to study the interaction of ecological processes, geologic processes, and human impacts. With the support of EPA, the USDA Forest Service (USFS) recently completed an updated Soil Resource Inventory (SRI) for most of the South Santiam Watershed. The small portion of the watershed outside the National Forest was mapped by the USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). The USFS SRI is mapping based on landtypes and the NRCS mapping is based on soil series and slope. The SRI landtype was determined for areas mapped by the NRCS while the soil series or soil classification were inferred for an area with SRI mapping. A soil sampling effort is being undertaken this year to obtain field soil morphology, soil chemical, and physical properties. The use of high resolution (10-m) digital elevation data has been a large aid in analyzing geomorphology and lithology. It will also be used for a watershed-wide slope and aspect mapping. The final soil spatial dataset will have information about geomorphology, soil classification, soil particle size, rock fragment content, soil depth, bulk density, soil organic carbon, soil nitrogen, mineralogy, soil temperature, and soil water retention. These data will be used as input to support EPAs ecosystem modeling.