Recovery of Vegetative Cover and Soil Organic Matter During Revegetation of Abandoned Farmland in a Semiarid Climate
Issue Date
1985-11-01Keywords
agricultural landabandoned land
soil organic matter
grasslands
reclamation
ecological succession
Saskatchewan
Alberta
vegetation
semiarid zones
land restoration
soil chemistry
rangelands
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Dormaar, J. F., & Smoliak, S. (1985). Recovery of vegetative cover and soil organic matter during revegetation of abandoned farmland in a semiarid climate. Journal of Range Management, 38(6), 487-491.Publisher
Society for Range ManagementJournal
Journal of Range ManagementDOI
10.2307/3899737Additional Links
https://rangelands.org/Abstract
Much of the farmland in the Canadian Prairie region has been abandoned over the years and allowed to revert to weedy cover and eventually to grassland. While some of the changes in vegetation during plant succession have been documented, limited information is available on changes in soil characteristics. The purpose of this study was to assess the vegetative cover and soil transformation under similar semiarid climatic conditions with an annual precipitation of about 310 mm on 3 sites abandoned in 1925, 1927, and 1950 as compared to adjacent native range. Total C and N, water-stable aggregates between 1.0 and 5.0 mm, and polysaccharide content increased, while chelating resin-extractable C, humic acid/fulvic acid ratios, caloric content of the rootmass, and dehydrogenase activity decreased in the successional sequence. Nevertheless, more than 55 years will be required to allow soil to return to native range standards under moderate grazing by livestock. Revegetated range may have to be subjected to lighter grazing pressures than usual to allow the vegetation to continue to increase its rootmass and thus the soil chemical properties. A hypothesis to explain changes in root- and top-mass ratios with time on the basis of the quality of soil nitrogen has been advanced.Type
textArticle
Language
enISSN
0022-409Xae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.2307/3899737