Repairing Damaged Primary Processes Healthy Soils Relative to

Repairing Damaged Primary Processes

Healthy Soils Relative to their potential, rather than some unobtainable standard Maintain the integrity of essential processes Physical Chemical Biological

The Soil Surface Conveys useful information about the conservation of limiting resources and the functioning of essential primary processes. Provides insight into stability, hydrologic processes, and nutrient cycling.

Improve Soil Surface Conditions Increase surface roughness Add aboveground structures Use soil conditioners Encourage development of microbiotic crusts

Rough Surfaces or those with Aboveground Obstructions Slow water movements and trap sediment, nutrients, organic materials, and seeds. Reduce wind speed and capture soil, nutrients, organic materials, & some seeds.

Plants as Obstacles to Fluvial Flows Reduce velocity, trap sediments, increase infiltration, stabilize soil Roughness coefficient (Manning’s n) Stiffness index

Plants as Obstacles to Eolian Flows Individual plants Shelterbelts Preparatory crops

Match Plants & Nutrient Regime Trying to maintain plants with high nutrient requirements in low nutrient soils creates problems. Artificially maintain elevated fertility. Rather than subsidizing species with high nutrient requirements, we should repair processes that capture and retain nutrients, and establish vegetation that is compatible with the fertility regime.

Repair or Replace Biotic Processes in Soil organisms play an essential role in the carbon cycle and in regulating the availability of other nutrients. Ecosystem recovery requires the establishment of vegetation that provides the energy (via root exudates) to fuel belowground processes.

Landscape Interactions Restoration sites are seldom functionally isolated from other parts of the landscape.

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