Minnesota Association of Professional Soil Scientists

June 27, 2014 WSPSS Meeting At TREEHAVEN 05 Jun JUNE 27, 2014 WSPSS MEETING TREEHAVEN

http://wspss.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/june-27-2014-wspss-meeting-at-treehaven/

As I hope you all know from Dave Gundlach’s earlier email the spring meeting of WSPSS has been rescheduled for Friday, June 27th at Treehaven. I am excited about the educational program that we have scheduled. Our afternoon presenter for the education session is Mark Krupinski NRCS-Ecological Site Specialist. Mark will do a presentation and field tour on the NRCS’ ecological site description and inventory program. Ecological site descriptions (ESDs) are a relatively new product from the NRCS. The NRCS has traditionally been concerned with soil and water conservation, with this new program they are adding native vegetation conservation and management concerns to the portfolio. About 50 new Ecological Site Specialists have been created nationwide to accomplish the task of eventually creating ESDs that relate to all major soil map units. An important feature within an ESD is the state and transition model which describes the various plant communities, their habitat characteristics and the processes of change within them. The field tour will shoe examples of various forest plant communities and how they got to be the way they are. Mark has over 30 years of experience in classifying and interpreting forest soils and is eager to explain his ESD project to WSPSS.