Soil phosphorus concentrations in Dane County, Wisconsin, USA: an evaluation of the urban-rural gradient paradigm.
Understanding the magnitude and location of soil phosphorus (P) accumulation in watersheds is a critical step toward managing runoff of this pollutant to aquatic ecosystems. Here, I examine the usefulness of urban-rural gradients, an emerging experimental design in urban ecology, for predicting extractable soil P concentrations across a rapidly urbanizing agricultural watershed in southern Wisconsin. I compare several measures of an urban-rural gradient to predictors of soil P such as soil type, slope, topography, land use, land cover, and fertilizer and manure use. Most of the factors that were expected to drive differences in soil P concentrations were found to be poor predictors of Bray-1 (extractable) soil P, which ranged from 4 to 660 ppm; while there were several significant relationships, most explained only a small proportion of the variation. A multiple linear regression model captured approximately 37% of the variation in the data using the urban-rural gradient, topography, land use, land cover, manure use, and soil type as predictors. There was a significant relationship between Bray-1 P concentration and each of the urban-rural gradients, but these relationships explained only between 2.6% and 3.3% of the variation in P concentrations. Extractable P concentration in soils, unlike some other ecosystem properties, is not well predicted by urban-rural gradients.
Center for Limnology, University of Wisconsin, 680 N. Park St., Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA. embennett@wisc.edu
Elena M
EM
Bennett
D000383:Agriculture; D002947:Cities; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D005068:Eutrophication; D005544:Forecasting; D008372:Manure; D010758:Phosphorus / Q000032:analysis*; D012989:Soil Pollutants / Q000032:analysis*; D014881:Water Supply; D014922:Wisconsin
D008372:Manure; D012989:Soil Pollutants; D010758:Phosphorus