Relationships between soil properties and vegetation at the Northern Experimental Forest, Howland, Maine

Abstract

This research relates the results of a survey and detailed analysis of soils in a northern mixed conifer forest to vegetation characteristics as represented by remotely sensed data. The work was conducted at International Paper's Northern Experimental Forest (NEF) at Howland, Maine as part of NASA's Forest Ecosystem Dynamics (FED) project. An intensive soil survey was performed and relationships between soil properties (i.e., drainage class, depth of active zone, water holding capacity, carbon / nitrogen ratio, pH, and sum of bases), species composition, and normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) from the Advanced Visible and Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS) were derived. Results showed that there was great variability in soil properties across the landscape due to complex regional glacial activity and recent alluvial events. Significant statistical differences were observed in species composition and NDVI between soil mapping units and with soil drainage class. However, other specific soil properties could not be used to explain these differences given the number of soil samples characterized, or without taking disturbance and management history into account. Simulation modeling, which would include soil data and stand history information as inputs, would provide an additional means of interpreting the relationship between remotely sensed imagery, inferred ecosystem properties, and complex, landscape-level patterns of soil characteristics.