Growth of aspen and white spruce on naturally saline sites in northern Alberta: Implications for development of boreal forest vegetation on reclaimed saline soils
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Lilles, E. B., Purdy, B. G., Macdonald, S. E. and Chang, S. X. 2012. Growth of aspen and white spruce on naturally saline sites in northern Alberta: Implications for development of boreal forest vegetation on reclaimed saline soils. Can. J. Soil Sci. 92: 213-227. We examined height and basal area growth over time for trembling aspen and white spruce in plots along a salinity gradient at six naturally saline sites in northern Alberta, as a benchmark for forest productivity on reclaimed saline sites. We measured root distributions and analyzed foliage for ions, nutrients and carbon and nitrogen stable isotope ratios. Both species grew on soil conditions previously considered unsuitable for forest vegetation [pH>8.5; electrical conductivity>10 dS m-1, sodium adsorption ratio>13 at depth (50-100 cm)] yet there was little evidence of nutritional toxicities or deficiencies. Aspen basal area growth decreased 50% as salinity increased, but aspen was commercially productive (site index=22) on soils with electrical conductivity of 7.8 dS m-1 at 50-100 cm depth. Growth of white spruce seemed to be unaffected by salinity level differences, but 78% of white spruce site indexes were less than 13 and would be considered non-productive. Both species showed growth declines over time, compared with non-saline reference growth curves, and rooted primarily in the forest floor and top 20 cm of soil. This suggests that rooting limitations may constrain longer-term productivity of forests established on sites with salinity at depth.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".