Chapter 7: Site Assessment and Soil Improvement1
Welcome to Chapter 7 of the publication Restoring the Urban Forest Ecosystem. This publication consists of 10 chapters available only in PDF format. The chapters explain basic ecological principles for the urban forest's water, soil, plant and animal communities. They discuss problems common in the urban forest such as aquatic eutrophication, soil aeration, invasive plants and loss of biodiversity. Solutions, strategies, examples, and additional resources are presented to help make urban forest restoration projects successful.
Abstract
The first step in any restoration project is to gain an appreciation of the site. The site needs to be defined, delineated, inventoried, and assessed for the restoration goals and objectives to be successfully accomplished. A key component in assessing sites for ecological restoration is developing, both for your own reference and others, a story of site development or a site picture. This is called determining the site context. Each site should be assessed for its ecological and societal context. An ecological management unit (EMU), the smallest treatable unit -- smallest restorable unit -- must be the focus for restoration management activities. Through the assessment process, the primary concern is the ecological restoration of the EMU. An initial site assessment should include inventory of resources, space, size, diversity, temporal changes, disturbances, stress, natural cycles, organic matter, management, form, and development of a final action-list. However, it is just as important to the success of any restoration project to include the stake holders, decision-makers and social systems in all phases of the project. Assessment is a part of the planning and management process, not a disjunct and separate piece. Remember that every site and situation will be different.
Another decisive step to be considered in a restoration project is soil health evaluation and improvement. Soil health management is essential for (and a part of) healthy and sustainable ecological systems. A number of soil features become degraded or destroyed over time in highly stressed environments. An average urban soil usually has few essential elements, poor drainage, erosion, soil compaction, a heavy texture, little organic matter, and a low diversity and small number of beneficial organisms. Restoration activities need to be prescribed carefully in trophic level order to assure success -- in other words, truly start at the bottom and restore upward. The soil is the foundation upon which we restore ecosystem functions and structures. The soil attributes to be restored successfully include texture, structure, bulk density, water, aeration, element holding capacity, essential elements, organic matter, contamination, and trophic enrichment.
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Footnotes
This document is part of Circular 1266, and Fact Sheet FOR 96, part of a series. School of Forestry Resources and Conservation, Florida Cooperative Extension Service, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. Published August 2001.
Kim D. Coder, Professor, University of Georgia, School of Forest Resources, Athens, GA 30602-4356. http://www.forestry.uga.edu/efr
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