The Effect of Distance from a Tree on the Moisture of the Soil Diana Sadowski Abstract We tested whether the

soil further from a tree would be moister than the soil near the tree. We found that there was no correlation between the distance from the tree and the soil moisture (R 2 =.1184).

Keywords: distance, soil moisture, tree

Introduction Tree roots have the ability to transport water from different soil levels (Burgess, Adams, Turner & Ong, 1998). Tree roots also uptake water to support tree life by taking nutrient up from many layers of soil (Ogle, Wolpert & Reynolds, 2004). We hypothesized that when distance increases, the soil moisture would increase.

Materials and Methods On September 13, 2011at 0830 we conducted our study at Alverno College in Milwaukee Wisconsin. The day was a moderate temperature with minimal wind and some cloud cover. We picked ten trees around campus and by each one calibrated the soil moisture meter and then using the 50 1

meter measuring tape measured out one meter, five meters, ten meters, fifteen meters, twenty meters, and twenty-five meters, at each of the points we measured the soil moisture. We analyzed the data using Excel for Windows 2010.

Results There was no correlation between distance from the tree and the moisture in the soil (Fig. 1; R2 =0.1184, with a linear). The range of values for distance from tree was 1 meter to 25 meters. The range of actual values for the soil moisture was 0 to 10 and the range of the average values for soil moisture was 3.4 to 4.9.

Figure 1. No correlation between distance from tree and the soil moisture. Discussion 2

Our data refuted the hypothesis that when distance from tree increases, the soil moisture would increase. There are some limitations to our experiment. In the time we had we could only collect data points from ten different trees, which is a relatively small data set. Also the nearness of the other trees could have affected our outcome because of the fact that the other trees would also be taking up water so if one of our data points farther out is close to another tree it could throw off our data. Having landscapers on campus also may affect our data. We cannot be sure unless we asked, what areas get watered and what areas dont, so if an area was watered before we took the data that could skew our results. All in all to get a better, more conclusive result this experiment should be done with more trees, in more places, and with more information.

LITERATURE CITED Burgess, S. O., Adams, M. A., Turner, N. C., & Ong, C. K. (1998). The redistribution of soil water by tree root systems. Oecologia, 15(3), 306-311. Retrieved from Article Stable URL: http://0-www.jstor.org.topcat.switchinc.org/stable/4222011 Ogle, K., Wolpert, R. L., & Reynolds, J. F. (2004). Reconstructing plant root area and water uptake profiles. Ecology, 85(7), 1967-1973. Retrieved from Article Stable URL: http://0-www.jstor.org.topcat.switchinc.org/stable/3450369