View looking north at Glacier Creek Preserve.
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Land disturbance from agriculture is widespread throughout the Midwestern United States but the effects of such land use on weathering and soil formation and function, especially at depth, are not well understood. Glacier Creek Preserve (GCP) located near Omaha, Nebraska, has soils formed in thick last-glacial Peoria Loess overlying glacial till. The original 52 ha of GCP were donated to the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1959, although the preserve recently expanded to 172 ha to encompass the entire Glacier Creek watershed. In 1970 the original 52 ha of the preserve were reseeded to native tallgrass prairie following over one hundred years of corn and soybean cultivation. The recently acquired northern portion of the site (31 ha Hayes Overlook) is currently used for corn-soybean agriculture. The site serves as an ideal location to study the influence of land management on the Critical Zone.
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SoilsThe main focus of my research is on the soils, which extend deeper than 13 m on the ridgetop. This includes measuring soil chemistry as well as solute fluxes in the watershed.
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Weather StationsMeteorological stations located on ridgetops in both the agriculture and prairie study sites record baseline atmospheric and soil parameters, including soil moisture, temperature, and electrical conductivity at four depths down to 120 cm.
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Soil MonolithsRidgetop soil monoliths show changes to soil morphology after just 45 years of different land use. On the far right is a soil profile from the corn-soybean agricultural field, the middle soil is prairie restored from agriculture 45 years ago and the left is the result of prairie remnants transplanted to the site in 1980.
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