Integrating Ecological Site Descriptions with Soil Morphology to Optimize Forest Management: Three Missouri Case Studies

Abstract

Academics and University Extension personnel have experience with soil mapping and providing soil suitability interpretations; however, a more efficient information conveyance to land custodians is desired to support informative land management applications. In the USA each state, in concert with the United States Department of Agriculture, has embarked on developing an online format linking soil survey with ecological site descriptions to provide information for forest and rangeland management to encourage soil protection - health and optimizing ecological services on individual land parcels. In this Missouri-based manuscript, we discuss three cases where soils and their associated ecological site descriptions provide land custodians information concerning their logical reference state vegetation community and detail land management decisions that transform the reference vegetation community to a different vegetation community. With each case, landscapes and their associated vegetations communities are potentially partitioned by soil, physiography, hydrology, and other attributes.