SUBAQUEOUS SOILS OF SOUTH RIVER, MARYLAND: SOIL-LANDSCAPE MODEL EVALUATION

Abstract

The way soils form, their distribution on the landscape, and their interactions with their ecosystems must be understood if they are to be managed well. Our incipient understanding of subaqueous soils limits successful management, but recent research efforts have sought to address this problem. The goal of this study was to evaluate the protocols for describing, characterizing, classifying, and mapping subaqueous soils. To this end, a subaqueous soil-landscape model (Wessel, 2020) was used to predict the distribution of soils in South River, a western shore Chesapeake Bay subestuary. The soils of South River were surveyed, and the observed soils were compared to the predictions. The model provided significant positive guidance for mapping subaqueous soils, confirming that a pedological approach is useful in subaqueous settings. Pedological data were used to generate a subaqueous soils map for South River and make recommendations to refine the model. Protocols related to soil porewater halinity and mineralogy were also investigated.