Question

You've been called into a river basin to analyze the plant communities. After doing a soil analysis, you receive the following results 45% clay, 35%, silt, 30% sand. Your soil texture would be considered clay. How would this affect the movement of water, air, and nutrients in this ecosystem? How will it affect your plant communities?

Answer 1

Since, the soil contains large amounts of clay, it is considerted as clayey soil. The clay soils have high water holding capacity. Therefore, water is present in high amounts. Due to accumulation of heavy waters, the air flow through soil cannot occur freely. Thus, soil becomes water logged with poor air flow. The high water levels in soil may leach some of the nutrients like calcium, phosphorous and nitrogen etc. Therefore, clay soils may lose nutrients also but rich oeganic matter provides many nutrients. The plant communities in clay soils require special adaptations to avail sufficient air like growing deeper roots as the surface is water logged. Clay soils have alkaline pH of  7 to 8.5. Plants like Acer, Aster, Butterfly weed, Hollyhock and Geranium, Ginkgo and Pinus etc grow in clay soils. These soils may require amendement by using nitrogen and calcium fertilizers mostly. The plants seedlings may die early because of lack of enough air or oxygen. Therefore, it is always suggested to plant young crops rather than seedlings.