Plant Growth in Soils From Snowdrift vs. Adjacent Driftless Meadow Sites

Abstract

Soils from snowdrift sites may be leached of nutrients and thus support less plant production than sozls from otherwise similar sites. In greenhouse experiments designed to test this hypothesis, biomasses of plants growninm soils from drift sites were 3-5 percent less than plants grown in soils from adjacent normal-pack sites. While the differences were statistically significant, it is unlikely that the large differences m vegetation between drift and driftless sites seen in the field are caused by leaching.