Abstract
Prairie potholes are depressional wetland features found throughout the northern Great Plains region of the United States and Canada. These wetlands have high potential to store large quantities of carbon, but many have been altered for conventional agricultural practices. Recently, conservation practices (e.g., no-till and cover crops) and federal conservation programs (e.g., Conservation Reserve Program (CRP)) are contributing to these landscapes returning to their more natural state. The restoration of prairie pothole soils has the potential to increase their carbon storage abilities, which would help decrease CO2 in the atmosphere and aid in mitigating climate change. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects that topographic position has on soil carbon content in agricultural landscapes with prairie potholes. Methods include: 1) collecting soil cores along a toposequence from four different land uses (native grassland, CRP lands, conservation agriculture, and conventional agriculture); 2) quantifying soil carbon content; 3) characterizing prairie pothole soil physical properties (i.e., bulk density and particle size); and 4) performing statistical analyses to evaluate relationships among total carbon, bulk density, and particle size for topographic position, land use, and the interaction between them at 0-15 cm and 15-30 cm depths. Total carbon based on topographic position followed the predicted model, carbon increased and bulk density decreased progressing from the upland position to the pothole. Clay and silt content also increased down the hillslope while sand content decreased. Total carbon based on land use was more complex, with the native site storing the most carbon followed by conventional sites, then conservation sites, and CRP sites had the lowest total carbon though differences were not statistically significant. This was probably due to small sample sizes, wide ranges of total carbon, multiple landscape positions not being accessible, and land use history not being well established. This research highlights the importance of topographic position on soil carbon sequestration and storage, an often-overlooked variable, and that land use impacts on carbon are complicated and can be overshadowed by other factors such as pothole morphology and hydrology.
Advisor
Mark Bowen
Committee Member
Donald Friend
Committee Member
Mriganka De
Date of Degree
2024
Language
english
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
Master of Science (MS)
Program of Study
Geography
Department
Geography and Anthropology
College
Social and Behavioral Sciences
Recommended Citation
Uchytil, Grace. (2024). Evaluating the Effects of Topographic Position on Soil Carbon Content in Prairie Pothole Agricultural Landscapes [Master’s thesis, Minnesota State University, Mankato]. Cornerstone: A Collection of Scholarly and Creative Works for Minnesota State University, Mankato. https://cornerstone.lib.mnsu.edu/etds/1466/
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Included in
Rights Statement
