Patterns of Soil Phosphorus Across an Urbanizing Agricultural Landscape

Understanding the magnitude and location of soil phosphorus (P) accumulation in watersheds is a critical step toward managing runoff of this pollutant to aquatic ecosystems. Here, we examined the usefulness of urban-rural gradients (URGs), an emerging paradigm in urban ecology, for predicting soil P concentrations across a rapidly urbanizing agricultural watershed in southern Wisconsin. We compared several measures of an urban-rural gradient to predictors of soil P such as soil type, slope, topography, land use, land cover, and fertilizer and manure use. Most of the factors that were expected to drive differences in soil P concentrations were not found to be good predictors of soil P; while there were several significant relationships, most explained only a small proportion of the variation. There was a significant relationship between soil P concentration and each of the urban-rural gradients, but these relationships explained only a small amount of the variation in soil P concentrations. Soil P concentration, unlike some other ecosystem properties, is not well predicted by urban-rural gradientsAdditional Chemical Analyses: These additional analyses were done to provide comparisons to Bray-1 P. Specifically, we wanted to know whether, in Dane County, there was a consistent relationship between total P and Bray-1 P. For sample sites on private property, specific site location information, such as GPS coordinates, is not included in these datasets. If you have a need for this information, please get in touch with the contact person listed aboveNumber of sites: 334; 20 of these sites with additional chem analyse