Soil, geomorphology and pre-European settlement vegetation associations of Southwest Louisiana

Defining the pre-European range of vegetation communities can enhance our understanding of the role soil, hydrology, and climate had on climax plant communities within southwest Louisiana. Coastal prairie grasslands were in a perpetual state of succession due to two primary disturbances; grazing, primarily by bison and other ungulates, and fires ignited by lightning and Native Americans. Along its borders, prairie vegetation blended into adjacent plant communities forming biologically diverse ecotones that may have fluctuated between a prairie, marsh, or forest dominated community as a result of variable conditions including climate cycles, disturbance and soil characteristics. Since European settlement, this landscape has undergone dramatic change with less than 1% of intact coastal prairie remaining. Conservation entities across the Western Gulf Coastal Plain are taking a collaborative, strategic, landscape scale approach to to conservation to enhance biotic and abiotic communities including pollinators.
This effort encourages communication and implementation of restoration and habitat enhancement actions within water sheds. We have produced a spatial dataset which considers landscape position and soil type, based on Soil Survey Geographic Database (SSURGO) data, to predict appropriate vegetation associations for plantings across southwest Louisiana based on expert elicitation, and historic references. Methods to produce this product begin with soil boundaries and identification information using Map Unit Keys (MUKEY) which were gathered from SSURGO data (Soil Survey Staff, NRCS 2017). Each mukey number was reviewed on the SOIL WEB to obtain information about components. Components include the proportion and general geomorphic features associated with soil series. Natural vegetation associations were examined and documented for each soil series individually using multiple references, including USDA Soil Series descriptions, expert elicitation, and historical spatial references. Professional reference maps contributed to this spatial dataset and include an 1863 work by Henry L. Abbot and numerous General Land Office surveyor maps and surveyor descriptions from the early 1800s drawn at the scale of a township. General vegetation categories associated with Soil Types (Mukey) were derived from reviewing the vegetation associations of the dominant components, or soil series. These general categories include: anthropogenic, prairie, transition, forest, marsh, swamp, uncertain, and water. Anthropogenic categories were generally due to significant dredging, or other industrial activities. Transitional areas included savannas and areas which may have significantly changed from prairie to forest dominated communities due to rainfall and/or fire frequency and intensity. Forest and swamp includes a range of forest types from which the distinction between these two categories primarily depend upon relative elevation and hydrology. There were a few soil series in which we are uncertain of their pre-settlement vegetation. These areas are anomalies on the landscape and include salt domes and old, disjunct river meanders which are largely comprised of Pleistocene soils and were most likely marais, yet currently much of it is heavily forested as bottomlands, and we are therefore uncertain if this result is solely due to absence of fire. Attribute data include MUKEYs within the parishes which are included in the Louisiana portion of the Gulf Coastal Plain Ecoregion. Information in the table includes symbols, common names, and components which were compiled from SSURGO dataset and Soil Web online resources (Soil Survey Staff, NRCS, accessed 2/2017). For more detailed vegetation associations for individual soil series, please refer to 'VegSoilAssoc_SWLA.pdf' or 'VegSoilAssoc_SWLA.csv'.