GEOG305: Coarse - Textured Soils - Estimating the Effect of Organic Matter Addition on Soil Properties - Report Writing Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Coarse-textured soils are generally poor in organic matter and with a small nutrient holding capacity and available water capacity, resulting in poor plant growth. A common amendment, commercial and ‘domestic’, is to add organic matter, such as peat moss which can be bought in the spring from garden supply stores. The nutrient content of peat moss is small (generally 1.5% N, 0.3% Ca and <0.04% K and Mg), so the benefits are through changes in water and cation exchange capacity rather than soil nutrient status. This exercise allows you to calculate the benefits of increased available water capacity and cation exchange capacity from the amendment and estimate how long that benefit will last. 

Assume we have a loamy sand. What ranges of sand, silt and clay does it contain, from a texture diagram? 

What is the mass of this soil in the top 10 cm, using a dry bulk density of 1.5 g cm-3, in kg m-2? 

Let us assume it contains only 1.5% organic matter – how much organic matter would be contained in the top 10 cm of soil (kg m-2)? 

We decide to add 5 kg organic matter per m2, as peat moss. 

We would want to know how this will affect the available water capacity and the cation exchange capacity of the top 10 cm of soil. 

We know that available water capacity (field capacity – permanent wilting point moisture content) increases with soil organic matter content, shown by the following graph for a loamy sand (Huntingdon 2007). We can calculate from the regression equation the volumetric water content at Permanent Wilting Point and Field Capacity when the soil has an organic matter content of 1.5%; the difference is the available water capacity. 

Recalculate these values with the organic matter content raised by the addition of peat (assuming it is well mixed in the top 10 cm). What is the change in the available water capacity by peat moss addition and what thickness (or depth) of water does this represent in the top 10 cm?

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