Soil Ecological Knowledge: Investigating Invasive Species and Restoration Management from the Bottom Up

Abstract for the Forest Preserve District of Cook County Symposium (April 19) 

Three years ago a team of soil ecologists, including me, coined the term soil ecological knowledge (SEK) to refer to ways in which insights from the our discipline might be incorporated into restoration management.  Formally SEK acknowledges interactions among the principal components of the soil system as well as feedback between the aboveground and belowground ecosystem processes.  For restoration to achieve its complex ends intentional and holistic integration of all aspects of the soil knowledge, physical, chemical and biological is necessary.  Some of the motivation for the development of SEK approaches to restoration emerged from work in the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.  We illustrate the approach with examples of managing in the face of invasion by exotic shrubs and earthworms.

Original SEK paper