Soil characteristics of oak stands along an urban-rural land-use gradient

Abstract

Urban-rural land-use gradients are environmental gradients determined by human-built structures and human activity. Although gradients of land use are readily measurable, little is known about the effects of urbanization on forest soil properties. In this research, soil properties were quantified in oak stands (Quercus sp.) along an urban-rural transect in the New york City metropolitan area. A suite of 25 soil chemical properties were subjected to a Principal Component Analysis to ordinate stands. The first principal component (PC1) accounted for 42.3% of the variation. Positive loadings of PC1 corresponded to high concentrations of Pb, Cu, Ni, Ca, Mg, and K; high total soluble salt concent..