User:Paleorthid/Sandbox

San Joaquin Soil Profile

• Surface layer: brown loam
• Subsoil - upper: brown loam
• Subsoil - lower: brown clay
• Substratum: light brown and brown, indurated duripan with 70 to 90 percent silica-sesquioxide cementation

See also

• Alfisols
• List of State Soil Science Associations
• National Cooperative Soil Survey

References

{{California-geo-stub}} {{soil-sci-stub}} Category:Pedology

Link recycling

• crop
  • almonds, figs, oranges,
  • Pasture, Rangeland, Livestock, Grazing
  • Timber, Forestry, Woodland
  • Urban development, Urbanization, City region
• International Soil Reference and Information Centre's World Soil Museum.
• List of State Soil Science Associations
• List of U.S. state soils
• Percolation
• Precipitation (meteorology)

roots

fire and the nitrogen cycle

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100809093645.htm Forest fires help power the nitrogen cycle August 9, 2010 American Society of Agronomy Years after a forest fire, soil bacteria communities have changed and convert more ammonia to nitrates, increasing soil fertility.

Control of fire by early humans

"Chasing game such as bison or mastodons into traps, or over cliffs with torches or set fires has been a standard of illustrators of stone-age life for decades." <comment: needs verification.

Source: http://www.primitiveways.com/uses_of_fire.html

"Pruetz has observed chimps monitoring the progress of a passing wildfire from a few meters away and then moving in to forage in the burned-out area. So while chimps cannot build or contain fires, they understand how fire moves across the landscape, and they use this knowledge to their benefit. "

Source: https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/neanderthal-fire/

"Anthropogenic burning was far and away the most important of these nonagricultural techniques."

Source: https://oregonencyclopedia.org/articles/anthropogenic_fire

"The notion that establishing a Native American burning regime will prevent catastrophic fires is demonstrably incorrect based on the 2007 re-burning of approximately 70,000 acres scorched in Southern California during 2003 fires. "

Source: http://www.californiachaparral.com/enativeamericans.html

More generally, fire is now regarded as a 'natural disturbance', similar to flooding, wind-storms, and landslides, that has driven the evolution of species and controls the characteristics of ecosystems.^[1] Excerpted from: fire ecology

prairie and grasslands

Prairie soils are the most extensive type of soil in the United States. Called Mollisol in the USA, and Chernozem in Canada, dark colored prairie soils cover 21.5 percent of the country's land mass. These deep, dark soils formed because for thousands of years the grass would put down deep roots, it would get really cold and the foliage and the roots would die back. That turnover created copious amounts of organic matter, which gave the soil that deep dark brown color that people associate with good, fertile soil. Something else that contributed to the quality of the soil in the prairies was that the prairies were not a monoculture of grass. Instead, they consisted of grasses, grains and a diversity of flowers and legumes. Anytime you have that kind of plant diversity, you have a more diverse community of soil microorganisms, an important component of soil health.^[2]. A fascinating aspect of prairie soils in the United States and Canada is high charcoal content, a product of grassland fire ecology. In some prairie soils, 60% of soil organic carbon is black carbon, ^[3] sufficient to contribute significantly to the black color of North American tallgrass prairie soils, as well as their superior nutrient and water handling characteristics. ^[4]

Tallgrass prairie is regularly renewed by fire and grazing, which also keep back the growth of trees and shrubs. Prominent grass species are big bluestem (Andropogon gerardi), switchgrass (Panicum virgatum) and Indian grass (Sorghastrum nutans). excerpted from: Excerpted from: flint hills

Grasslands burn more readily than forest and shrub ecosystems, with the fire moving through the stems and leaves of herbaceous plants and only lightly heating the underlying soil, even in cases of high intensity. In most grassland ecosystems, fire is the primary mode of decomposition, making it crucial in the recycling of nutrients.^[5] It has been hypothesized that fire only recently became the primary mode of decomposition in many grassland ecosystems after the removal or extinction of large migratory herds of browsing or grazing megafauna driven by predator pressure. In this view, in the absence of functional communities of large migratory herds of herbivorous megafauna and attendant predators, overuse of fire to maintain grassland ecosystems may lead to excessive oxidation, loss of carbon, and desertification in susceptible climates.^[6] excerpted from: Fire ecology

"... managed fire during the dormant season is most effective at increasing the grass and forb cover, biodiversity and plant nutrient uptake in shortgrass prairies.^[7] excerpted from: Fire ecology

"The shortgrass prairie has a long human history. The Kiowa, Comanche, and Arapahoe peoples occupied the land, hunting bison and pronghorn. Seasonally, these tribes would stage hunts in the adjacent mountains such as the Rocky Mountains. To manage the prairie these tribes and their predecessors likely used fire. They would create fuel breaks, a gap in vegetation or other combustible material that acts as a barrier to slow or stop the progress of a brushfire or wildfire. A firebreak may occur naturally in areas without vegetation or other fuel, such as a river, lake or canyon around their settlements. These fuel breaks would also entice large herbivores to patches of fresh new growth. " excerpted from: Shortgrass prairie

"The Central Shortgrass Prairie has a long human history, with the Kiowas, Comanches, and Arapahoes once occupying much of the land to hunt bison and antelope and stage seasonal hunts into the adjacent mountains. These tribes and their predecessors likely used fire to manage the prairie, both to create fuel breaks around their settlements and to entice large herbivores to patches of fresh new growth." ^[8]

The shortgrass prairie is a long thin stretch of territory that starts at the top of the country and makes its way to the bottom. Due to this, the climate varies from North to South, but is essentially the same from East to West. The temperature in the North is significantly colder on average then the temperature in the South. Also, there is more precipitation to the south, and more precipitation to the East. An interesting distinction about the shortgrass prairie compared to the tall and mixed grass prairies is that it has a one to two month summer drought, where the other two do not. This means that it also the driest prairie of the three.

^[9] Excerpt from Shortgrass prairie

"The tallgrass prairie biome depends on prairie fires, a form of wildfire, for its survival and renewal."^[10] Excerpted from: Tallgrass prairie

"...the prairie is the natural habitat of fire."^[11]

"The Plains Indians started fires to attract game to new grasses. They sometimes referred to fire as the "Red Buffalo." " Excerpt from NPD Fire and Grazing: ^[12]

"The east-to-west gradient of increasing altitude, decreasing precipitation, and increasing temperature and the north-to-south gradient of temperature and humidity have created zones of tall, medium, and short-grass prairies. . ... The short grass prairies found in the 15-25 inch annual precipitation zone ..." Excerpt from OS short and tall grasses: ^[13]

Savanna

The frequent fires which maintained the savannas were started by the region's many thunderstorms and Native Americans, with most fires burning the forest understory and not affecting the mature trees above. Before the arrival of humans about 15,000 years ago, lightning would have been the major source of ignition, the region having the most frequent wind and lightning storms in North America.^{[14][15][16][17]} The European settlers who displaced the natives blended the local use of fire with their customary use of fire as pastoral herdsmen in the British Isles, Spain, and France.^[14] Excerpt from : Eastern savannas of the United States

The effect of fire on soil organic matter—a review

Source: http://www.fsl.orst.edu/ltep/Biscuit/Biscuit_files/Refs/Gonzales-Perez%20EI2004%20fire.pdf

"Alterations in the mineralization indices of some soils lasting at least for 2 years after a wildfire have been found, accompanied by an increase in OM stabilization (Fernandez et al., 1999)."

"Forest fires produce more charcoal than savanna or grassland fires (Stocks and Kauffman, 1997)."

"As a whole, BC represents between 1 and 6% of the total soil organic carbon. It can reach 35% like in Terra Preta Oxisols (Brazilian Amazonia) (Glaser et al., 1998, 2000) up to 45 % in some chernozemic soils from Germany (Schmidt et al., 1999) and up to 60% in a black Chernozen from Canada (Saskatchewan) (Ponomarenko and Anderson, 1999)"

"Only a small part of the heat generated during a forest fire is radiated to soil."

"Occurrence of wildfires in forest ecosystems has lasting effects on both the microbial composition and the OM, and hence on the whole soil dynamics. The alteration of natural ecosystems affects OM turnover and therefore productivity and community structure may be also affected (Pastor and Post, 1986)."

"Shindo et al. (1986a,b) compared optical properties, IR spectra and X-ray diffraction patterns of HAs from volcanic ash soils with those from charred plant residues and concluded that charring process could be one out of the possible mechanisms for the formation of HAs in some volcanic soils (Andosols)."

Wild Hearth A Prolegomenon to the Cultural Fire History of Northern Eurasia excerpts

Source: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-015-8737-2_2 Pyne, Stephen J. 1996. Wild hearth. A prolegomenon to the cultural fire history of northern Eurasia. Pages 21-44 In: Goldammer, Johann G.; Furyaev, Valentin V. (Ed.). Fire in ecosystems of boreal Eurasia. Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.

"Since the time of Homo erectus hominids have, through fire, interacted with the Earth. Anthropogenic fire has been present throughout northern Eurasia whenever ice sheets, sea levels, and climate have permitted; throughout the Holocene, occupation by Homo sapiens has been continuous. Through their fire practices humans have sought, from the earliest times, to reshape and render habitable their surroundings. The ways by which humans have protected themselves from wildfire and the means by which they have projected their own domesticated fires onto the land have varied considerably — they have changed over historic time as well as across geographic space. But their fires mark human presence as surely as flint arrowheads or burial mounds. Everywhere fire has mediated between humans and the land. The biota of northern Eurasia has thus coexisted, if not coevolved, under the pressures of anthropogenic fire."

Fire as a Soil-Forming Factor

Source:^[18]

"It is also believed that the charcoal left on the ground from incomplete combustion of woody materials participates in increasing soil fertility."

"What is not completely oxidized to ash is often transformed to charcoal, a heterogeneous mixture of thermally altered biomacromolecules (Knicker et al. 2008), whose more refractory pool can last intact in natural environments for centuries or even millennia (Titiz and Sanford 2007; Robin et al. 2013). Charcoal may represent a substantial fraction of soil organic matter in fire-prone ecosystems and as such strongly affect several soil properties (Knicker 2011). It has been also suggested that charcoal is able to stimulate the degradation of the native soil organic matter (Wardle et al. 2008)."

"A few minerals are peculiar ramifications of wildfires, because they form in soil through thermal transformation of other minerals. One of these is maghemite, a magnetic Fe-oxide that occurs, in the presence of oxygen and organic matter, at the expense of other iron oxides or hydroxides, such as ferrihydrite (Campbell et al. 1997) or goethite (Clement et al. 2011)."

"some minerals decompose at temperatures plausible in wildfires, such as kaolinite—perhaps the most common clay mineral in soils—that collapses at 500–550 °C (Ulery et al. 1996; Yusiharni and Gilkes 2012)."

"There are soils where fire plays a so marked role in molding their features (Fig. 3), that they could be meaningfully called Pyrogenic soils."

"Since the 1990s, man began to be recognized as the sixth soil-forming factor (Amundson and Jenny 1991), distinct from the other organisms essentially because he possesses a cultural component that varies from society to society and which operates independently of genotype (Amundson 2006). Fire could be perceived as one of the many ways man influences the pedogenesis, since he lights most of modern fires, voluntarily or involuntarily. Nonetheless, fire is per se independent of man and well before the emergence of people on Earth, it played a key role in plants adaptation and ecosystems distribution (Pausas and Keeley 2009). Furthermore, in spite of the common belief that when there were fewer people there must have been less blazes, the total biomass burning is now lower than at any time in the past 2000 years (Prentice 2010). Actually, man is highly efficacious in fighting fire and in the absence of his intervention, hundreds of square kilometers can burn undisturbed (Mack et al. 2011)."

"One could wonder whether fire ultimately involves all soils. Although most of them actually had such an experience, as confirmed by the usual finding of charcoal in soil and sediments (Schmidt and Noack 2000; Knicker 2011), some other soils may have been never touched by fire because never colonized by vegetation or exceptionally well preserved from flames."

USFS Wildland fire in ecosystems excerpts

Source^[14]

"Lightning as a cause of fire over geologic time is widely appreciated. But humans also have been a major source of ignition, having used fire for various purposes during the past 20,000 years (Wright and Bailey 1982) and beyond. The pervasive influence of intentional burning by Native Americans during the past several centuries is probably not fully appreciated (Denevan 1992; Gruell 1985a). Human influence was particularly significant in grasslands and those communities bordering grasslands (Wright and Bailey 1982). Historically, fire caused by all ignition sources occurred over large areas covering more than half of the United States at intervals of 1 to 12 years; and fire occurred at longer intervals over most of the rest of the country (Frost 1998)." (page 2)

"Native Americans used fire extensively to shape the vegetative mosaic for thousands of years," (page 57)

"Hough (1877) thought the “oak openings,” “barrens,” and prairies east of the Mississippi resulted from Native American use of fire to promote grass growth and attract game. He stated, “Scarcely a year passes without the occurrence of fires of sufficient extent to attract public notice.” Numerous authors (DeViro 1991; Patterson and Sassamen 1988; Stewart 1951, 1963; Van Lear and Waldrop 1989) have discussed the vast extent to which Native Americans used fire." (page 61)

"The vast Shenandoah Valley was burned annually by Native Americans to keep it from reverting to forest (Leyburn 1962)." (p 81-2)

"Prairie—Historically, Native Americans contributed to the creation and maintenance of the tallgrass prairie ecosystem by frequently burning these ecosystems, which controlled woody vegetation and maintained dominance by herbaceous plants. In the Eastern tallgrass prairie, Native Americans were probably a far more important source of ignition than lightning. With grasses remaining green through late summer and a low incidence of dry lightning storms, lightning caused fires were probably relatively infrequent. Few studies of the pre-Euro-American tallgrass prairie have been conducted.." (page 86)

"It appears from these historical accounts that the season when fires were common varied regionally and through time as a result of the cultural practices of the people living in a particular area." (p 87)

"Bison prefer burned to unburned grassland for grazing during the growing season and can contribute to the pattern of burning in prairie (Vinton and others 1993)." (Page 87)

"Alternatively, fuels could be manually removed or raked away and dispersed from around the boles of old growth trees." (page 103)

"In recent centuries, fire regimes in Western oak forests were characterized by frequent, low intensity fires. This was probably due to use of these types by Native Americans, who probably carried out programs of frequent underburning." (page 131)

"In the plains and grasslands, Native Americans ignited fires for a wide variety of cultural reasons. This was the predominant source of ignition in heavy use areas particularly at lower and middle elevations. But, an ever-present ignition source was lightning, which was probably more important in valleys surrounded by forests" (page 142)

"Global change, the combined effect of human activity on atmospheric and landscape processes (Vitousek 1994), affects all aspects of fire management." (p 175)

"Prior to the arrival of Europeans in North America, native people routinely used fire to drive game animals and manage vegetation near encampments (Barrett and Arno 1982; Bonnicksen 1999; Boyd 1999; Clark and Royall 1995, 1996; Pyne 1982). In some regions Native Americans developed large agrarian communities where vegetation was extensively altered. Although the degree to which fire was used to initiate and maintain agriculture is uncertain, agriculture and harvesting of biomass for energy did lead to substantial change in fire regimes and vegetation in some areas. " (page 176)

"Considerable debate exists about the relative importance of Native Americans and lightning in maintaining historical fire regimes ( Barrett and Arno 1982; Frost 1998; Keane and others 1999). The relative importance of Native American fires was probably greater in topographically complex areas where fire compartments were smaller and where lighting ignitions were infrequent (Frost 1998). Also debated is whether anthropogenic burning should be considered part of the native or natural fire regime (Arno 1985; Kilgore 1985). Fires set by Indians were often of different seasonality, frequency, and landscape pattern than those started by lightning (Frost 1998; Kay 1995). Indian and lightning-caused fire existed for thousands of years, a short evolutionary period but a long time for plant communities to adjust to fire disturbance. This long period of fire on the landscape argues strongly for accepting both sources of ignition in considerations of Euro-American presettlement fire history used to guide management of ecosystems. Efforts to suppress fires were modest at first relying on wet blankets and buckets around dwellings and campsites (Pyne 1982)." (page 192)

"Historically, fires were more frequent in Eastern than in Western grasslands. High productivity of biomass was maintained in the tallgrass prairie by frequently occurring fire that recycled accumulated thatch. A diverse composition was probably favored by variable frequency and seasonality of fires (Abrams and Gibson 1991; Bragg 1991). Western grasslands appear to have generally experienced fire less frequently (Gruell 1985; Wright and Bailey 1982) but still frequently enough to hold back invasion of woody plants. Fire regimes have shifted to too much fire in the drier portions of the sagebrush-steppe ecosystem that occupies over 100 million acres in Western United States. Fire frequency has increased in many areas due to invasion of cheatgrass and medusahead, introduced annuals that cure early and remain flammable during a long fire season. Increased fire frequency exerts strong selective pressure against many native plants (Keane and others 1999)." (p 194-5)

riff off Chernozem talk to fire ecology

Identification of Factors that Aid Carbon Sequestration in Illinois Agricultural Systems^[31]

Wildland fire in ecosystems: effects of fire on flora ^[32]

xxxFire and Grazing in the Prairie^[33]

xxxSplendor of the Grass: The Prairie's Grip is Unbroken in the Flint Hills of Kansas ^[34]

The effect of fire on soil organic matter-a review ^[35]

Licensing controversy

• http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc/OccupationalLicensing.html
• http://www.memagazine.org/backissues/may99/features/tolicense/tolicense.html
• http://www.nspe.org/lc1-glga.asp

Population

• Currently over 2 million practicing engineers in the USA divided by 295,734,134 USA population is over 0.68%
• Current 1.45 million employed engineers in the USA divided by 295,734,134 USA population is 0.49%
• 1992 1.9 million total engineers in the USA divided by 240 million USA population is 0.79%
• Current 27,501 Professional Engineers licensed in New York State divided by a population of 19,227,088 is 0.14%

Note: For whatever reason the US Bureau of Labor statistics thinks there are far less than 2 million engineers. But the ratios of totals to apparent licensed to totals are still as wide as the New York stats infer.

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