Assessing Soil Aggregation In Urban Gardens and Modern Agricultural Land Management Practices.

Improving soil aggregation is a fundamental goal for natural resource conservation. Soil aggregation is an important indicator of possible future erosion issues due to poor aggregation, which can lead to soil loss and runoff. Therefore, the objective of this study was to determine water stable aggregates, mean weight diameter, macro aggregates and carbon associated macro aggregates under the five different land management practices used within this research case. The study was conducted in western Kentucky using soil samples collected from 3 and 5 year old urban community gardens as well as conventional and no till farming systems. The depths at which the soil samples were collected were from 0-7.5 cm and 7.5-15 cm. In this presentation, the influence of the age of the gardens, soil depths, crop and tillage practices on soil aggregation trend will be discussed.