Efforts to restore native biodiversity often include the removal of invasive species. However, the process of removing unwanted species can have unintended effects. We studied how the removal of one exotic species, Robinia pseudoacacia (black locust trees), during efforts to restore native pine barren ecosystems at the Albany Pine Bush Preserve, may affect soil conditions. We hypothesized that before restoration, the top layers of soil would have a lot of nutrients that would gradually decrease with increasing depth, and that after restoration there would be a uniform spread of nutrients throughout the soil profile due to soil mixing during tree removal. We collected five sequential soil core samples from the Albany Pine Bush in six different locations within the same black locust forest. We did this both before and after tree removal, and analyzed the samples for soil carbon and nitrogen content. We found that the soil samples before restoration had higher concentrations of carbon and nitrogen in the top layer of soil compared to the deeper layers, whereas after restoration there were no significant differences in the amount of nutrients in the different layers of soil. With further analysis, we also discovered that the shallower depths were losing nutrients while the deeper depths were gaining nutrients by using delta values for both carbon and nitrogen content before and after restoration. These results indicate that tree removal has the unintended consequence of altering soil chemistry. The alteration in soil chemistry could slow recovery of native species following tree removal, so restoration methods that minimize soil disturbances is a possible avenue moving forward.
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