RECOVERY OF SOIL HEALTH IN DISTURBED SOILS AT FISHER FARM

Areas of past soil disturbance can be useful in understanding the rate at which soils recover from intense human activity. At Fisher Farm Park in the North Carolina Piedmont, a gas pipeline was installed in 2013 disturbing what was otherwise park land that had been farmed as recently as the 1990s. This study compares soil health between the two sites to assess how quickly soils recover towards a previous state. To determine soil health, I compared percent soil organic matter, A horizon quality (depth, color, structure), and soil invertebrate abundance and diversity between the pipeline and non-pipeline samples. Despite the 11 years since the pipeline construction, the soil still showed observable differences across every indicator and statistical significance between A horizon depth and variance in percent organic matter. The pipeline soils were more homogenous than the non-pipeline soils indicating lower soil diversity and perhaps a more limited habitat diversity at the soil level. These results emphasize the importance of minimizing soil disturbance during construction projects to promote soil health and diversity.