Oof 🥶🥶

I first got a brief intro to soil taxonomy when I took Principles of Soil Science in undergrad. I was confused and intimidated by it, and thought I’d never like it or be interested in it. After the field course, I love it, and now I use it in my job all the time!

Saw this on my computer earlier today and was incredibly confused. LOL.

I think the tide is starting to turn. Practical tips on conserving fungi might help, e.g. planting native plants, leaving leaf cover on the ground, reducing the use of chemical fertilizers, etc. Community workshops could be a good way to discuss and implement best practices and share results.

I’ve stained plant roots for AMF before, and from what I understand, the acidic glycerol-trypan blue method is necessary for thick, woody roots. For thinner, less woody roots, the ink and vinegar method works fine. Not sure about EMF.

Awesome picture! What kind of plant roots are you looking at?

We think these factors together are what led to these skid trails being so visible after almost 100 years! The logging definitely had a long-term impact on soil quality. It was definitely one of the coolest things I’ve ever done and something that makes me really glad I’m a soil scientist 😊 /End

And of course the steep slopes contributed to the erosion too. And then, because of the loss of soil, there was likely a loss of nutrient capacity from the soil, making it harder for the plants to return on the skid trails, perpetuating the lack of cover and furthering erosion. 10/

We also found some soil lines on rocks (which I didn’t get pictures of 😭) and soil accumulation behind logs, stumps, shrubs, and rocks on the skid trails. So our best guess about what happened was erosion due to a lack of ground cover and plant roots to hold the soil in place on the skid trails. 9/

The other was the rock fragments at the surface on the skid trail. When we dug a soil pit in the surrounding forest, those same rock fragments were 10 to 15 or even 20 cm below the soil surface. 8/

A couple things jumped out at us immediately when we took our data. The first was the steepness of the hillsides that these skid trails were on. They were on slopes of 60-70%. Generally, it’s not recommended to log slopes over 40%. 7/

We took data both on the skid trail and the forest between the skid trails (picture of the surrounding forest below). 6/

This is what the skid trails looked like on the ground. 5/

Typically, after about 50-70 years, skid trails are indistinguishable from the surrounding forest. So we were asking ourselves, why are these skid trails still so visible after about 100 years? So we went out to investigate…4/

One of our other colleagues sent us a document that showed that from 1900 until about 1942, there was railroad logging done in the area. These lines are the skid trails from that logging. 3/