Impacts of 48 years of consistent cropping, fertilization and land management on the physical quality of a clay loam soil

Reynolds, W. D., Drury, C. F., Yang, X. M., Tan, C. S. and Yang, J. Y. 2014. Impacts of 48 years of consistent cropping, fertilization and land management on the physical quality of a clay loam soil. Can. J. Soil Sci. 94: 403–419. Soil physical quality (SPQ) is often ignored or under-monitored in long-term field studies designed to determine the economic and environmental sustainability of agricultural practices. Accordingly, a suite of complementary soil physical and hydraulic parameters was measured using intact core samples to determine the SPQ of a Brookston clay loam under a long-term (48 yr) cropping, fertilization and land management study at Woodslee, Ontario. The SPQ under virgin woodlot, fertilized monoculture sod and unfertilized monoculture sod treatments was similar, with optimal SPQ occurring in the top 10–20 cm, but severely suboptimal SPQ occurring below 30 cm because bulk density (BD), relative field capacity (RFC) and saturated hydraulic conductivity (KS) were excessive, and because orga...