Historical Land Use Dynamics in the Highly Degraded Landscape of the Calhoun Critical Zone Observatory

Abstract

Processes of land degradation and regeneration display fine scale heterogeneity often intimately linked with land use. Yet, examinations of the relationships between land use and land degradation often lack the resolution necessary to understand how local institutions differentially modulate feedback between individual farmers and the spatially heterogeneous effects of land use on soils. In this paper, we examine an historical example of a transition from agriculture to forest dominated land use (c. 1933-1941) in a highly degraded landscape on the Piedmont of South Carolina. Our landscape-scale approach examines land use and tenure at the level that individuals enact management decisions. We used logistic regression techniques to examine associations between land use, land tenure, topography, and market cost-distance. Our findings suggest that farmer responses to changing market and policy conditions were influenced by topographic characteristics associated with productivity and long-term viability of agricultural land use. Further, although local environmental feedbacks help to explain spatial patterning of land use, property regime and land tenure arrangements also significantly constrained the ability of farmers to adapt to changing socioeconomic and environmental conditions.

The effect of accelerated soil erosion on hillslope morphology

“…; Coughlan et al. ). According to a leading US Forest Service hydrologist, Marvin Hoover, ‘nowhere in the country have hydrological processes in the soil been altered by past land use to a greater extent than in the South Carolina Piedmont’ (Hoover, ).…”

“…The territory is now dominated by pine and pine–hardwood forests (both planted and naturally regenerated), has an average rainfall of approximately 1180 mm yr −1 , and temperatures typically range between −2.4 and 33.1° C (average minimum/maximum for the coldest/warmest months, respectively) (Coughlan et al. ).…”

“…The Calhoun CZO in South Carolina (Figure 1) is an area where decades of intensive agricultural land use have resulted in a distinctive topography with a wide range of gullies, interfluves, hillslopes and significantly eroded areas Brecheisen and Richter, 2014;Bastola et al2017;Coughlan et al 2017). According to a leading US Forest Service hydrologist, Marvin Hoover, 'nowhere in the country have hydrological processes in the soil been altered by past land use to a greater extent than in the South Carolina Piedmont' (Hoover, 1950).…”

“…During the New Deal era (1933)(1934)(1935)(1936)(1937)(1938)(1939)(1940)(1941), the US Forest Service purchased many properties for the Sumter National Forest, including areas that would become the Calhoun CZO. This state-initiated intervention started a trajectory of regeneration with the overhaul of terraces, extensive tree planting and gully rehabilitation (Coughlan et al 2017). The territory is now dominated by pine and pine-hardwood forests (both planted and naturally regenerated), has an average rainfall of approximately 1180 mmyr −1 , and temperatures typically range between −2.4 and 33.1°C (average minimum/maximum for the coldest/warmest months, respectively) (Coughlan et al2017).…”

Designing a network of critical zone observatories to explore the living skin of the terrestrial Earth

“…Now, researchers are targeting multidisciplinary aspects of CZ entities. For example, at the Calhoun CZO, where the South Carolina landscape was severely eroded by cotton farming, logistic regression models treat market and policy conditions in the context of topographic characteristics (Coughlan et al, 2017). By fostering measurements from all disciplines in centralized places, CZOs are discovering not only how to cross disciplines but also how individual disciplines can converge.…”