Soil Changes After Sixty Years of Land Use in Iowa.

Soils form slowly, thus on human time scales, soil is essentially a non-renewable resource. Therefore in order to maintain and manage our limited soil resources sustainably, we must try to document, monitor and understand human induced changes in soil properties. By comparing current soil properties to an archived database of soil properties, this study assesses some of the changes that have occurred over the last 60 years, and attempts to link those changes to natural and human induced processes. This study was conducted across Iowa where the primary land use has been row crop agriculture and pasture. We looked at changes in A horizon depth, color, texture, structure, organic carbon content and pH.