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Soil Health and Nutrient Dynamics in Agroecosystems of the Midwestern US

Wade, Jordon
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0981-6578
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1555334900543422

Abstract Details

2019, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Environment and Natural Resources.
Soil health is an emerging framework that seeks to integrate the physical, chemical, and biological components of soil. It is defined by the USDA as “the continued capacity of soil to function as a vital living ecosystem that sustains plants, animals, and humans”. The breadth of this definition has allowed “soil health” to become a context-specific definition, letting soil health be defined in terms of the desired outcomes. In the context of agronomic nutrient management, the primary desired outcome is a tightening of the nutrient cycle to minimize losses to the environment. Here, I use the framework of soil health to understand how soil health indicators influence and are influenced by on-farm nutrient management practices. Three separate studies were conducted to: 1) understand the factors influencing the efficacy of the most widely used biological soil health metric, mineralizable carbon, 2) determine the effect of 12 years of phosphorus (P) restriction on biological and physical soil health in three Ohio sites, and 3) integrate biological soil health indicators into nitrogen (N) management strategies across the Corn Belt. The first study found that mineralizable C was variable across and within soil test labs. However, even after controlling for variations in methodology, a significant amount of the variability was soil-specific. The second study found very few effects of P restriction on soil biological and physical health. However, P restriction slightly increased organic P stocks and resulted in consistent shifts in the balance between the processed and easily-metabolized portions of the active C pool. In the third and final study, an increase in soil biological health was shown to increase the yields for a given N fertilization rate, as well as having slight predictive abilities in predicting whether a site would be responsive to N fertilization. This study also showed that soil biological health may be slightly increased at moderate N fertilization rates. Collectively, these results show that biological soil health metrics can be used in nutrient management schemes, provided that a careful analysis and interpretation of the data is undertaken.
Steve Culman (Advisor)
Michael Demyan (Committee Member)
Kristin Mercer (Committee Member)
Nicholas Basta (Committee Member)
Jessica Logan (Committee Member)
125 p.
Agronomy; Soil Sciences
soil health; soil fertility; nitrogen; phosphorous; fertilizer management; agronomy; corn; agriculture; cropping systems; nutrient management; Corn Belt

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Wade, J. (2019). Soil Health and Nutrient Dynamics in Agroecosystems of the Midwestern US [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1555334900543422

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Wade, Jordon. Soil Health and Nutrient Dynamics in Agroecosystems of the Midwestern US. 2019. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1555334900543422.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Wade, Jordon. "Soil Health and Nutrient Dynamics in Agroecosystems of the Midwestern US." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1555334900543422

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1555334900543422
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© 2019, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Soil Health and Nutrient Dynamics in Agroecosystems of the Midwestern US by Jordon Wade is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 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.