Spatial Distribution of Soil Properties in Water Conservation Area 3 of the Everglades

The need to integrate environmental responses at the landscape scale is a reoccurring theme in biogeochemistry and ecology. This linkage can be addressed by using geostatistics to examine spatial patterns and then assessing the relationships of these patterns to known ecosystem drivers. In this study, we used a stratified random sampling design to collect soil cores from 388 sites to quantify the spatial distribution of soil properties in a 233 000 ha subtropical wetland, Water Conservation Area 3 (WCA‐3). To reflect hydrologic boundaries within the system, WCA‐3 was divided into three zones: 3AN, 3AS, and 3B. Interpolated maps indicated that the highest levels of bulk density were located in western 3AN, whereas the highest total phosphorus (TP) values were located in northern 3AN and in areas adjacent to a canal bisecting the area. Twenty‐five percent of 3AN had TP concentrations in the 0‐ to 10‐cm layer > 500 mg kg −1 , indicating enrichment beyond historic levels. Only 5% of 3AS and 6% of 3B showed TP > 500 mg kg −1 Total nitrogen (TN) and carbon (TC) were lowest in western 3AN, whereas the rest of WCA‐3 had higher and more homogenous TN and TC distributions. Overall, distributions of soil properties were more homogeneous in 3AS than they were in 3AN or 3B. The approach used in this study provides a model for assessing current impacts to WCA‐3, supplies baseline conditions against which future restoration efforts can be evaluated, and could be used in other landscape‐scale wetland restoration projects.