Workshop establishes the Northeastern Soil Monitoring Cooperative

Abstract

Environmental monitoring is an essential tool for identifying changes in the biosphere. The need for environmental data has led to national programs to monitor atmospheric deposition, the composition and growth of forests, and the chemistry of lakes and streams in regions affected by acidic deposition. However, there has been no organized effort to monitor changes in soils despite their importance to agriculture, forests, wetlands, and water quality.The lack of attention given to soil monitoring can be attributed, in part, to questions regarding its feasibility Do soil changes occur too slowly to warrant monitoring, or is spatial variability too great to detect change? Within the past 15 years, however, changes in soil chemistry have been measured through repeated sampling in eastern North America and in Europe in a variety of soil types, over sampling intervals as short as 5 years. As the number of studies grows, so too does the recognition that methods of sampling and analysis are not always compatible and methods for archiving are not well developed.