State of Forest and Rangeland Soils Research in the United States

Flying across the eastern United States at an altitude of 10, 000 m, we see a landscape below that is a mosaic of forests, rivers, farm fields, towns, and cities. Almost all of the lands covered by forests today have undergone intensive harvest, and even regrowth and reharvests, following decades or centuries of cultivation-based agriculture and other land uses. The visible change in the boundaries of forests and fields is matched by similar, though less visible, patterns in the soils. Indeed, the soils that form the living surface of the Earth below may be as different on each side of the airplane as they are from one corner of the United States to another. Local differences in hillslopes and valley bottoms, in the types of bedrocks and sediments that sit below the living soil, and in the history of human land uses, may be greater than the differences driven by the climate of, for example, Virginia versus Oregon. The inhabitants of the land that became the United States survived on food and resources which were fundamentally derived from soils. The economic output of the colonies and the youthful United States flowed more from agriculture than from industry until at least the Civil War era (Gallman and Weiss 1969). Wood from the forests built the towns and cities, while energy from wood was the primary fuel of the American economy until the 1880s (U.S. Energy Information Administration 2011).

Duke Scholars

Author Daniel D. Richter Earth and Climate Sciences