Skip to main content
ARS Home » Midwest Area » Morris, Minnesota » Soil Management Research » Research » Publications at this Location » Publication #78937
Title: SOIL DIAGNOSTIC PROPERTIES AND SOIL SERIES MODIFICATIONS RESULTANT FROM TILLAGE TRANSLOCATION

Author
item LEMME, GARY - UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA
item Lindstrom, Michael
item SCHUMACHER, THOMAS - SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIV.

Submitted to: Meeting Abstract
Publication Type: Abstract Only
Publication Acceptance Date: 7/25/1997
Publication Date: N/A
Citation: N/A

Interpretive Summary:

Technical Abstract: The comprehensive system used for soil classification developed by the Soil Survey Staff of the U.S. Department of Agriculture is based on soil properties found in the field rather than on genesis or presumed soil forming factors. This method of classification allows soil of widely different characteristics to exist in close association. It is the objective of this study to explain how soils located in close vicinity with widely different properties may have developed due to the processes of soil translocation and erosion from long-term tillage operations. Rates of soil translocation over time from moldboard plowing across a landscape continuum were determined at two sites. The magnitude of soil movement away from the shoulder position at a south western Minnesota site has resulted in a soil originally formed under a prairie environment to be classified as a Typic Udorthents because of the loss of the mollic epipedon. At a site in east central South Dakota, the magnitude of soil translocation has resulted in erosion phases being assigned to a Vienna series (Udic Haploborolls) located predominately on summit-backslope field positions from eroded to depositional phases and explains the presence of the pachic mollic epipedon in the Lismore series (Pachic Udic Haploborolls) located in the footslope position. Measured soil properties in the Ap horizon of the Storden and Ves soil series and of the various phases of the Vienna series show many undesirable changes in chemical and physical properties including cation exchange capacity, pH, organic matter content, calcium carbonate equivalent, and water holding capacity, all of which have important implications to crop production.