Abstract

Healthy soils are essential for sustaining the world's ecosystems and maintaining human lifestyles. The adoption of biological, chemical, and physical analyses to assess soil health is a relatively new concept with a paucity of scientific work assessing how these metrics are affected by field management in urban systems Soil samples (n = 110) were collected from a diverse range of sports fields and, for comparative purposes, golf courses, farm fields, non-sport urban, undisturbed forest, and non-vegetated sandy soils. The samples were then analyzed using biological, chemical, and physical metrics to determine if there were significant differences between sport/golf venues and non-sport/golf soils. Soil health measurements included total organic carbon (TOC), organic matter (OM), permanganate oxidizable organic carbon (POxC), total inorganic carbon (TIC), potentially mineralizable nitrogen (PMN), carbon respiration (CO2), Î²-glucosidase (BG), autoclave citrate-extractable (ACE) protein, and aggregate stability (AS). All soils that supported vegetation had higher soil health test values than the non-vegetated sandy soils. In general, differences were either minimal or not detectable between sports field soils and other soils. Notably, golf venues demonstrated higher CO2 and BG than sport venues, while TOC and OM levels in sports fields and golf courses were similar to unmanaged, urban, and farm systems. In addition, ACE protein levels were notably higher in forests. The fertilized venues were generally higher for the less mobile nutrients with poor solubility (P, Zn, Fe, Mn, Cu) and lower in pH than the sand control. Somewhat surprisingly, the non-fertilized forest was generally equivalent to the fertilized venues in nutrients Sports fields had ample soil fertility and reasonable pH and EC, although they had excessively high soil P concentrations. Correlations between soil properties were performed and statistical differences were analyzed using Analysis of Variance and Tukey-Kramer mean separation. Biological and physical soil properties were highly correlated with each other, and overall, biological activity was similar across all land uses, including sports fields. In general, nutrient concentrations and EC were positively correlated, but tended to decline with increasing sand content. The data collected, and comparisons made, will add to scientific and community understanding of soil health as a function of land management.

Degree

College and Department

Life Sciences; Plant and Wildlife Sciences

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