Chapter 17 Case studies of soil quality in the Canadian Prairies: Long-term field experiments

Publisher Summary Long-term monitoring is required to assess the effects of natural and anthropogenic processes on soil-quality attributes. Long-term crop-rotation experiments have been set up in the Canadian Prairies with the prime goal of improving crop yields and economic returns. These experiments can be used to assess changes in physical, chemical, and biological attributes of soil quality, provided that climatic and edaphic factors are carefully evaluated. The chapter presents the compilation of data from the long-term experiments at four sites in western Canada that have been continually cropped for 28 to 64 years. These experiments can provide information that can be used to develop indicators of sustainable land use and to assess the impact of management on sustained productivity of these soils. The most comprehensive long-term crop-rotation study conducted in the semi-arid Brown Chernozemic soil zone (Aridic Haploboroll) of the Canadian prairies is an experiment initiated in 1966 at Swift Current, Sask. The various treatments of this rotation experiment allow to examine the influence of fertilization, legume pulse crops, cropping intensity, and crop type on soil biochemical, chemical, and physical attributes that influence soil and environmental quality and crop production.