By Scout Nelson
Soil is the foundation of forests, serving as a living, breathing ecosystem. Healthy forest soils provide essential services, including a space for trees and plants to grow, water storage and filtration, nutrient cycling, and carbon storage. They hold more than half of the carbon in U.S. forests, highlighting their importance for our environment.
Healthy soils promote forest health, productivity, and resilience by meeting the basic needs of trees and other plants, such as water, nutrients, and air (carbon dioxide and oxygen). The roots of plants act as the interface between them and the soil, facilitating the exchange of water, nutrients, and gases. If we could zoom into the soil rooting zone, we would find a vibrant and diverse ecosystem surrounding the roots.
Soil biota, which includes organisms like fungi, bacteria, algae, and soil fauna (nematodes, insects, protozoans), play various roles in maintaining soil health. For instance, mycorrhizae fungi form beneficial relationships with plant roots, providing essential nutrients in exchange for sugars produced by the plants. Without such soil life, we wouldn’t have healthy soil, which in turn means we wouldn’t have healthy forests.
To support both soil and forest health, we must maintain soil biodiversity. Managing forests for both above-ground and below-ground biodiversity can be achieved simultaneously. The best way to protect forest soil health is to keep forests as forests, avoiding conversion to fields or parking lots.
Several stewardship practices can help maintain healthy and biodiverse forest soils. These include promoting diversity in understory plants and tree species, retaining slash from harvested trees to enrich the soil, and protecting sensitive soils during harvesting. Keeping trees live during harvesting also supports future forest generations and the surrounding ecosystems.
Minnesota’s Voluntary Site-Level Forest Management Guidelines provide effective practices to maintain the health of our forests, emphasizing the interconnectedness of soil and forest health. Being a caretaker of the forest means being a caretaker of the soil.
Photo Credit:gettyimages-dmytro-diedov
Categories: Minnesota, General