Effect of Different Land Use Practices on a British Columbia Spodosol

Teaching Sustainable Soil Management: A Framework for Using Problem-Based Learning

“…Replacement of the forest vegetation with agricultural crops and associated management practices since the 1960s have resulted in substantial changes of some soil properties. For example, soil organic matter in the A horizon increased from about 2% in a typical Bose soil under its natural vegetation (Luttmerding, 1984), to 6.5% as determined by Lavkulich and Rowles (1971) on the cultivated sites of the present day UBC Farm back in 1970, to 12 to 17% in 2013 (data not shown). An additional change caused by the annual additions of various organic amendments at the farm is the formation of a well-developed Ah 1 horizon ranging between 30 and 60 cm in thickness (Fig.…”

“…As per the learning outcome for Week 1 of the UBC Farm case (Table 2), students reviewed background information on the climate, topography, and the dominant soil type at the case study site(s) as provided in soil survey reports (Luttmerding, 1984;Bertrand et al, 1991) and previous studies carried out at the UBC Farm (Lavkulich and Rowles, 1971). That review allows students to identify the key characteristics for crop production, including the abundance of rainfall during fall and winter months in contrast with the relatively dry summer months, flat topography, the presence of a naturally occurring very dense horizon at about 1 m depth within the soil profile, coarse soil texture (i.e., sandy loam to loamy sand), low organic matter content, and acidic soil pH.…”

Disturbance Legacy on Soil Carbon Stocks and Stability within a Coastal Temperate Forest of Southwestern British Columbia, Canada

“…The three sites had similar site series (CWH dry maritime 01: western hemlock-flat (Lavkulich & Rowles, 1971;Thompson, 1985;Soil Classification Working Group, 1998). Based on these similarities, the three forest sites differed only in their disturbance history and species composition.…”

“…Soil particle-size analysis was performed following the wet sieving method of Kettler et al (2001). Earlier studies within PSRP have reported that the soils of the study area do not have appreciable amounts of silt or clay (Lavkulich & Rowles, 1971;Thompson, 1985). Thus, silt and clay were not separated to ensure there was sufficient soil to measure the SOC concentration associated with this fraction.…”

“…In Canadian inland temperate rainforests, intensive harvesting of old-growth forest has resulted in significant reductions in total forest C stocks and reductions in forest floor C stocks (Matsuzaki et al, 2013). The early study of Lavkulich and Rowles (1971) in coastal temperate rainforests of British Columbia reported the effect of land use on Podzolic soil properties, focusing on the overall effects of converting mature forest to agricultural uses. Grand and Lavkulich (2012) showed that harvest (clear-cutting) of mature coastal temperate forests of British Columbia resulted in additional SOM inputs to the mineral soil, but these inputs were not stabilized or retained in recovering second-growth forests.…”