Topographically controlled grassland soils in the Boreal Cordillera ecozone, northwestern Canada

Abstract

Sanborn, P. 2010. Topographically controlled grassland soils in the Boreal Cordillera ecozone, northwestern Canada. Can. J. Soil Sci. 90: 89-101. Properties and ecological relationships of grassland soils were examined at three widelyseparated sites (Stikine River Valley, British Columbia, and Carmacks and Kluane Lake, Yukon) in the Boreal Cordillera ecozone of northwestern Canada. At these latitudes (58 to 62°N), grasslands are largelyrestricted to south-facing aspects, and usually occur as islands within the boreal forest. The grayish and yellowish brown, base-rich, Ah horizons had a thicknessweighted mean organic carbon concentration of 19.5 g kg-1. Ah horizons exhibited a range of microstructures similar to that documented in grassland soils in the southern Cordillera and Great Plains, ranging from spongyto massive in the young loess-derived Kluane Lake pedon to well-developed crumb microstructure in the finer-textured Stikine pedon. These pedons met the morphological and chemical criteria, and likelythe soil climate requirements, for the Dark Brown and Brown great groups of the Chernozemic order of the Canadian System of Soil Classification (3rd ed.).