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T.B. Dissertation_12182019.pdf (3.57 MB)

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Investigating Soil Quality and Carbon Balance for Ohio State University Soils

Burgos Hernández, Tania D.
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6226-0009
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1577141132704637

Abstract Details

2020, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Environment and Natural Resources.
Urban, or anthropogenic, soils are those which are highly influenced by human activity. These soils are spatially complex due to the physical disturbances to which they are subjected through direct anthropogenic impacts. Human intervention and their impacts on urban soils are the predominant cause of the unique characteristics of urban soils, which are not present in natural, undisturbed environments. Changes in landscape vegetative cover from natural to urban environments could have a negative effect on biodiversity by loss of habitat, the capacity of soil to store C, and reduction of biomass. To better classify, characterize, map and determine carbon fractions of urban soils this research’s main objectives were to: (1) find relatively undisturbed soils in the urban study area to use as a reference for future studies and use USDA soil taxonomic methods to characterize and classify these urban soils; (2) determine if mid-DRIFTS can serve as a rapid method for calcite and dolomite assessment in urban soils when compared to the volumetric calcimeter method, and if acid pre-treatment effectively removes calcite and dolomite from urban soil samples; (3) compare four methods to determine organic carbon in highly disturbed environments and compare methods to determine organic carbon in soil with inorganic carbon present and (4) develop a classification of urban soils based on taxonomic distance, create a map of The Ohio State University soils, and develop a measure of soil disturbance by comparing the urban soil classification to an anthroposequence. In Chapter 2, historical Ohio State University campus maps were used to locate and sample areas where minimally disturbed soils might be found. These pedons, inadvertently presented different stages of an anthroposequence. Pedon 1 showed a mostly homogeneous parent material. Pedon 2 had large concentrations of inorganic C derived from the calcareous glacial outwash parent material. Foreign materials and disrupted horizonation in Pedon 3 were evidence of significant disturbance. Information obtained from soil characterization in urban environments provides information for policymakers to understand the urbanization of soil environments and to enhance ecosystem services. Soil characteristics found on these three sites established a baseline for Chapter 5. In Chapter 3, specific mid-infrared frequencies (mid-DRIFTS) known to be associated with carbonates, dolomite, and calcite were identified, and specific peak areas were measured and trained with results obtained with the volumetric calcimeter method. Multiple linear regression was used to estimate total carbonates with peaks areas at 2980 cm-1, 2515 cm-1 and 730 cm-1 resulting in a root mean squared error (RMSE) of 3.56%. Greater prediction accuracy of calcite (875 cm-1) and dolomite (2515 cm-1) were achieved using single peaks in bivariate relationships resulting in RMSE of 3.09% and 2.30%, respectively. Soil samples were treated with 1 M HCl for 24 hours to remove carbonates, and total carbonate, dolomite, and calcite contents were estimated again using both volumetric calcimeter and mid-DRIFTS. The reduction in carbonate concentrations post-acid treatment was considerable (97% for dolomite, and 96% for calcite and total carbonates), but it was not complete; thus, this could compromise estimation of other soil carbon fractions such as total soil organic carbon concentrations. In Chapter 4, organic carbon was assessed using multiple methods in alkaline and non-alkaline soil samples. The dry combustion, loss-on-ignition at 400° and 550°, and dichromate digestion methods with the non-alkaline dataset were all strongly correlated (r > 0.82). However, paired t-tests revealed significantly different results between all four methods (p < 0.05). For the alkaline data set the two loss-on-ignition methods and the dichromate method were strongly correlated with each other (r = 0.91), however the two dry combustion methods were weakly correlated with the others (0.45 ≥ r ≤ 0.67). The dichromate oxidation proved to have the lowest variance of the 5 methods tested (0.25% OC). In Chapter 5, the OSACA (Outil Statistique d'Aide a la Cartogenese Automatique) algorithm was used to determine and cluster taxonomic similarity distances between the properties of observed soil properties in 108 soil profiles across the campus. Seven clusters were determined to be the optimum number for this area. Once these soil classes were modeled and predicted across the study area, it was found that random forest prediction techniques performed better than geostatistical methods such as regression-kriging. This work demonstrates that the contiguous classification system is a feasible option to use in the classification of anthropogenic soils, and the comparison of samples sites to known pedons and classes.
Brian Slater, Ph.D. (Advisor)
Nicholas Basta, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Matt Davies, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
Sakthi Subburayalu, Ph.D. (Committee Member)
198 p.
Environmental Science; Soil Sciences
urban soil, soil characterization, urban soil carbon, inorganic carbon, organic carbon, numerical classification

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Burgos Hernández, T. D. (2020). Investigating Soil Quality and Carbon Balance for Ohio State University Soils [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1577141132704637

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Burgos Hernández, Tania. Investigating Soil Quality and Carbon Balance for Ohio State University Soils. 2020. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1577141132704637.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Burgos Hernández, Tania. "Investigating Soil Quality and Carbon Balance for Ohio State University Soils." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2020. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1577141132704637

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1577141132704637
149
© 2020, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Investigating Soil Quality and Carbon Balance for Ohio State University Soils by Tania D. Burgos Hernández is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.