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Organic matter's effect on soil bulk?
Here's a question that I'm hoping someone knowledgeable about soil
can answer.
Imagine I had a plot of land on which I dumped six inches of wood
chips every year. Obviously this would cause the level of the plot
to rise over the first few years. The question is, after, say, ten
years, would the level continue to rise, or would it stay constant?
In other words, when the wood chips deteriorate, do the elements go
into the air and water?
What got me thinking about this was the realization that trees
don't seem to form the bulk of their substance from what they get
>from the soil. If they did, you'd expect them to be sitting in
depressions. Instead, the soil around them actually seems to rise
up a little. Then I realized that they could do quite a bit of
building with just the elements found in air and water. If that's
true then it's natural to ask whether decay reverses the process.
Thinking about it, I guess that pretty much has to be what happens,
but I never hear anyone phrase it quite like that.
- Tom
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