The Citizen Science Soil Health Project, Years 4-6

For Objective #1, Increase CSSHP growers' knowledge about soil health and use of soil health tests,   in 2021, 51% of our growers said that they would like to receive a list of recommended actions to consider, in conjunction with their soil health lab reports.  However, we were not able to provide growers with concrete management suggestions, based on their soil testing results.  When we ran this idea by local conservation district staff and other Ag professionals, they said that they were already overtaxed with their current workload and they could not take on any additional work.  They also expressed reservations regarding the wisdom of making recommendations without a site visit to really understand the issues on a site, and without developing a more formal conservation plan for the site.  We were able to provide consistent referrals to Soil Conservation District and Regen Ag Lab staff for assistance with soil test interpretation.  Over the next 4 years of the CSSHP, we will continue to try to find ways to address this need that our growers have expressed while working within the limitations of local resources.

To make up for our inability to provide growers with concrete management suggestions, at our annual meeting in 2023, we included small-group break-out sessions to practice interpreting soil health tests and to gain a better understanding of what the lab results mean.  Growers divided into 3 groups (Pastures, Veggies and Commodities) and each discussed 2 different sample lab tests with local Ag professionals leading each group. 

We also added a new analytic tool to our soil test reporting in 2023 and 2024 to help our growers better understand their testing results.  When we emailed a grower their soil testing lab results, we included a table showing their results on 5 soil health indicators over all their previous years in the project.  This allowed the grower to easily see what if any progress they had been making.  (Table 10).

Another initiative we instituted to increase adoption of soil health practices was to increase the frequency of our CSSHP NEWS emails, which included information on soil health grants and their deadlines (See Table 11 for list of grants we publicized).  

In our 2025 survey of CSSHP growers, about half of respondents reported applying for one or more soil health grants or reimbursement programs over the last 6 years, and all but one received some funding.  Altogether, 17 growers reported that they applied for a total of 59 grants, ranging from 1-7 grant applications per grower.  An additional quarter of CSSHP growers have not yet applied for a grant but are thinking about it.  The final quarter of growers are not interested, or their operations are too small or not qualified for grant funding. ( Figure 12)

For Objective #2, Strengthen connections between different factions of Colorado’s agricultural community, we built on CSSHP activities of 2021-2024. We continued to use humor, light-hearted introduction games (“Your name and your weirdest compost experience”), Soiley Awards, and sharing meals to introduce folks to each other and break down barriers. Our growers were not interested in a soil health listserv forum, so we did not pursue that.  In 2022, we built, published and publicized our new website, SoilHealthProject.org, which includes our goals, processes, supporters, grower profiles, findings, articles, forms, and links to our 17 CSSHP videos on our You-Tube channel.

However, our most successful strategy happened by accident.  At our annual meetings, we had been setting up the tables in north-to-south rows in the room, with attendees seated on the west side of the tables, facing the speaker to the east, the front of the room.  Attendees could only easily speak to the person seated to their left or right.  In 2024 and 2025, we set up the tables in east-to-west rows, with attendees seated on both the north and south sides of the narrow tables, facing each other.  They had to turn their chairs to see the speaker at the front of the room on the east side.  Attendees could now easily speak to multiple people on each side and across their table.  As a result, there was a lot more conversation in the room.  Noise levels have been steadily increasing at our annual meetings, which we take as a very good sign.

For Objective #3, Improve key soil health indicators of CSSHP growers, we continued to collect data, and analyze our existing data, to determine the cause of the variability in our soil health testing results. Please see the Research section and narrative on our findings from 2022-2024.

By the end of 2024, the 6^th year of our project, we had collected and run soil tests on 985 soil samples from a total of 368 different sites.  Some sites only had 1-2 years-worth of data, but we also had 77 sites with 5-6 years-worth of soil testing data. In addition to the Haney and PLFA soil testing data from Regen Ag Labs, we also had management data from our growers on all 368 sites, including supplemental water availability, grazing information, soil disturbance activities, unusual weather, organic matter inputs, days of living cover,crops and cover crops grown, tillage intensity, days of cover crops, and fertilizer inputs.

With help from our advisors, we also created a simple subjective soil assessment tool which our growers filled out when they collected their soil samples. (Table 12B Subjective Soil Assessment Tool)  However, this tool proved to be less successful than we had hoped.  For instance, using this tool, almost all growers said that they had no signs of erosion.  The few growers who documented signs of erosion generally were the super-conscientious participants with the best soil and best soil health practices.

For Objective # 4, Develop CSSHP Soil Health Leaders, recognized as such by peers, we continued to ask various CSSHP growers to give presentations in their areas of expertise to the whole group and at outreach events. Over the last 6 years of the project, 22 CSSHP growers have made a total of 20 presentations and videos at CSSHP events.  16 of these presentations took place in 2022-2024.  CSSHP growers told us which videos and presentations had been useful for their operations (Figure 13).

In our 2025 survey, only 28% of CSSHP survey respondents reported reaching out to fellow CSSHP growers for advice or information on soil health.  However, 80% of respondents were able to identify one or more CSSHP grower or local expert whom they would go to for soil health advice in the future.  66% of respondents had asked a soil health expert for advice on interpreting their test results, a few asking several people. (Figure 14)

Please see Education sections for further information.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

#1 PROGRESS

#1A: CSSHP GROWERS HAVE INCREASED THEIR SOIL HEALTH PRACTICES.

At the end of 2023, we had 5 years of data on the 51 sites which had been in the project since 2019, with data on both their management practices as well as their soil testing results.  Figure 15 shows that the average Days of Living Cover of these 51 sites increased by 20 days since 2019.

Our growers increased their Days of Living Cover by increasing their use of cover crops, converting annual crops to perennial systems, and incorporating more fall-planted small grains into their rotations.

We examined the 200 sites for which we had cover crop data, and found that our growers’ Cover Crop Use increased for almost all our crop categories, including Commercial Veg/Flower/Fruit, Commodity Row Crops, and Home Gardens.  Only when a rancher inter-seeded a cover into an existing pasture, or reseeded an annual field into a perennial crop did we credit a cover crop to that site, so we expected that cover crop use would be low for many of our established Perennial Hay/Alfalfa/Pasture sites.  Dry-land grain sites, which depend on 420 days of fallow soil to store enough soil moisture for a biennial small grain crop, avoid cover crops because cover crops can deplete soil moisture.  Our growers  increased their days of cover crops on average by 25 days/site since 2019. (Figure 16)

When we examined the Tillage Intensity of the 191 sites for which we had tillage data and grouped them into their 5 crop categories, we saw that 4 crop groups made very good progress in reducing their Tillage Intensity, with Commercial Veg/Flower/Fruit sites and Dry-land Grains making the most progress.  Perennial Hay/Alfalfa/Pastures held steady with quite low Tillage Intensity scores. (Figure 18)

When we examined just the 51 sites for which we had 5 years of data, we saw the same trend of Tillage Intensity decreasing by 17 points over the last 5 years. (Figure 19)

However, our news on Organic Matter Inputs was more mixed.  The good news was that a majority of all our growers used organic matter inputs on their sites within the previous 5 years, with home gardeners leading the way. We only counted the organic matter inputs which were acquired off-site in this analysis.  Manure deposited by grazing animals on-site, or clippings from on-site cover crops, were not counted as organic matter inputs here. Thus, perennial fields with aftermath grazing often showed as having no organic matter inputs, even though they may have had many days of grazing animals depositing manure and urine in their fields.  (Figure 20)

However, the bad news was that when we examined our successive years of data and divided our sites into their different crop categories, we saw that only home gardeners increased their Organic Matter Inputs by 2023.  All other crop categories saw a sharp decrease in Organic Matter Inputs.  Commercial Veg/Flower/Fruit growers saw the largest decrease.  Organic Matter Inputs decreased by 13T/acre on average since 2019. (Figure 21)

There were several possible causes of this decrease.

• We experienced an exceptionally wet May-June-July in 2023. Growers had a hard time planting, cultivating and harvesting between storms.  They may not have wanted to or been able to get additional machinery into soggy fields to spread amendments.
• Our very tight labor market meant growers struggled all season to fill vacant positions. They may not have had enough workers to do things like spread amendments. Additionally, our tight labor market has increased labor costs sharply.  This has affected Commercial Veg-Flower/Fruit growers the most as their crop category is the most labor intensive.  Recent high labor costs may have consumed any profit that formerly paid for purchased amendments and rising fuel and hauling costs may have discouraged compost applications.
• Some growers with excessively high phosphorus levels may have decided to forego organic matter inputs and use cover crops instead, to avoid increasing their soil phosphorus to dangerous levels.

Table 22A summarizes our growers’ excellent progress incorporating soil health practices in 5 years:

#1B: LESSONS FROM 6 SITES WITH GREATEST SOIL HEALTH PROGRESS 

In 2024, we ranked the sites with very little to no variability in their soil sampling depths according to how much progress they had each made in improving their soil health over the past 5-6 years.  We then featured the highest-ranking site from each of the 6 crop categories represented in the CSSHP.  Our 6 featured sites are those with the highest soil health progress ranking and lowest soil sampling depth variability in their respective crop categories. Figure 23 shows the progress each of our featured sites made during their time in the CSSHP.

In Figure 23, solid lines show each site’s results over a 5–6-year period for 5 soil health measurements: soil organic matter, soil respiration, organic nitrogen, organic carbon, and an overall soil health score.  There was a lot of variability year-to-year in sites’ lab values, so we also included the dotted trend lines, to represent the overall direction of each set of lab values.  All the dotted trend lines showed an increase for every site, some increasing more than others.  As expected, soil organic matter lines, the orange lines at the bottom of each graph, showed the smallest increases, since soil organic matter changes very slowly.

There were some common themes among the varied practices which these 6 growers used to improve their soil’s health.

1. Supplemental irrigation water helps. 5 out of 6 of these growers (all except Dry-land Wheat) applied supplemental irrigation water.  More water means more varied and bigger plants, healthier roots and soil microbes, and the ability to grow fall cover crops and to water grazing livestock year-round.
2. Decreasing tillage intensity helps. All 6 growers decreased tillage intensity over 6 years, or maintained it at a previous very low level. (Figure 24) Less tillage means more and healthier soil microbes, especially more fungi, which feed more nutrients to crops.

   

3. Organic Matter Inputs help. All 6 growers added or plan to add significant amounts of organic material to their soil, through imported amendments, grazing, cover crops and crop residues.  (Figure 25)  It may not matter how more organic matter gets into your soil, just that you get it there.  Eastern Colorado soils tend to be low in organic matter to begin with.  Our high altitude and short growing season mean there is not much excess organic material available on the Front Range, but our 6 CSSHP growers had each found creative ways to add organic matter economically.

   

4. Starting with soils in the “Poor” to “Good” range helps. None of these 6 growers started with soils that were in the “Excellent” range, where soils may have reached their carbon saturation point.  It may be very difficult to improve soil health in “Excellent” soils.  Some of our CSSHP growers who enrolled in the CSSHP with “Excellent” soils are discouraged because they aren’t seeing their soil health scores improve significantly, despite their best efforts.  It may be that their soils have reached their carbon saturation point, and now they can only build deeper “Excellent” soil, just maintain and make more of, but not improve significantly, the “Excellent” soil they already have.

Most importantly, these 6  CSSHP growers all increased the Total Organic Carbon in their soils over the last 6 years of our project. (Figure 26)  They took carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestered it in their soils.  They turned CO₂ gas into solid organic carbon which their soil microbes turned into more stable forms of soil organic matter.  This carbon will persist in their soils and make their soils and crops more resilient in the face of coming droughts and floods.  Even given Colorado’s high altitude, short growing season, poor shallow alkaline soils, and arid conditions, our CSSHP growers have shown that Colorado farmers and ranchers can remove carbon from the atmosphere to help draw down atmospheric CO₂ levels.  Colorado farmers and ranchers can join other growers from California, to Iowa, to Pennsylvania, in sequestering carbon in their soils.

#2 PLFA TESTING PROBLEMS IN 2023

In 2023, we saw illogical and precipitous drops in PLFA scores, but only on the soil samples our growers collected in the fall.  The 3 graphs below illustrate this.  Figure 27 and Figure 28 show the 2019 and 2021 PLFA results for total microbial biomass for all our sites, with each dot representing one site’s score and the date it was collected.  (We provided PLFA tests only every odd numbered year.)  There was a wide range of total microbial biomass scores in both spring and fall for all our sites in both 2019 and 2021. 

Figure 29 shows our sites’ total microbial biomass in 2023.  This graph shows the same wide range of scores in the spring, but suddenly in the fall, all sites have very low scores.

When we brought this to our lab’s attention, they initially suggested that the cause could be a very wet May-June-July followed by a very hot dry August-September-October.  When soil microbial populations expand rapidly under favorable conditions like we experienced in May-June 2023, they can sometimes use up all their available resources, and then suddenly crash.  If this were the cause of our problem, we would expect to see a difference in the drops in PLFA scores of dry-land fields, compared to fields which continued to receive supplemental irrigation water throughout the growing season.  However, we did NOT see any difference between the total microbial biomass scores of our dry-land fields and our irrigated fields, as Figure 30 shows.

We also checked to see if the amount of time samples were stored in freezers, or if the type of crops grown in the field were correlated with the drop in scores.  They were not.  We checked the Haney test scores which were pulled from the same soil samples.  Haney test results were all within normal ranges.  Our sampling and shipping protocols had stayed exactly the same for the last 5 years.  All this meant that the problem was most likely something that happened while the soil samples were in route to the lab, or at the lab itself.

Our lab bent over backwards to ascertain the cause of this problem.  They re-ran samples and re-calibrated their machinery multiple times, tore apart then cleaned and reassembled their machines, substituted all new reagents, switched lab techs performing the test, sent samples to other labs, re-checked other clients’ samples and results, called other researchers for advice, and bought several new parts for their machines.  Our lab finally isolated the problem to a combination of slight leakage within the gas chromatography machine, and an oven with variable inconsistent heat.  The re-run results we received after these problems were fixed were more in line with previous years' results.

#3: SOIL PH CORRELATES WITH LOCATION

In 2022, we compared our sites’ soil pH with longitude (east-west location).  We found that sites further east out on the plains tend to have higher pH than sites closer to the Front Range foothills and up in the mountains. (Figure 31)  This could be due to several things.

Precipitation is higher in the mountains and foothills than further out on the plains.  Higher rainfall is associated with more acidic soils.  Also, a site’s original parent soil material is more acidic in the mountains and foothills than on the plains.  Furthermore, the pH of irrigation water can change soil pH with repeated applications.  Irrigation water becomes more alkaline as it travels further east, picking up tail-water, salts and minerals.  All this means that the location of a field might determine its soil pH as well as its soil health, since high soil pH has a significant detrimental effect on soil health.

#4: Average pH and Location of 7 Different Crop Groups

We wondered if certain crop groups might be located further east or west, thus influencing their soil pH.  We sorted our sites into 7 crop groups.

• Dry-land Grains : Dry-land wheat and millet, no irrigation, using a crop-fallow system.
• Commodity Row Crops: Irrigated crops like corn, triticale, wheat, hemp, beans, sugar beets, barley, millet, silage.
• Commercial Vegetable/Flower/Fruit : Irrigated vegetables, flowers and fruit, sold commercially.
• Perennial Hay/Alfalfa/Pasture: Irrigated perennial pasture systems of grass, hay and alfalfa.
• Home Gardens: Vegetables, flowers and fruit trees for home consumption.
• Non-farm Grasslands : Dry-land grasslands with no recent tillage or farming practices.
• Trees : Forests and tree farms.

We then calculated each group’s average longitude, and calculated the average pH for each of the 7 groups, as shown in the next Figure 32 . No surprise, trees are located to the west in our forests, with dry-land gains and commodity crops located to the east, where large sections of undeveloped agricultural lands remain. The order of the average pH of the 7 groups closely corresponds to their relative longitude.  Figure 32 suggests that some crop groups face more of a disadvantage than others when it comes to soil health, since their location can determine their soil pH, which in turn can make improving their soil’s health more difficult.

#5: PREDICTING THE SOIL HEALTH OF DIFFERENT CROP GROUPS

In 2019-2021, CSSHP data analysis showed that more supplemental irrigation water, more days of living cover, more organic matter inputs, more grazing days and more use of cover crops can all improve a site’s soil health.  We also showed that lower tillage intensity and a lower soil pH improves a site’s soil health.  In 2022, we calculated the average use of each soil health practice for our 3 largest crop groups: 1) Hay/Pastures/Alfalfa, 2) Commercial Vegetables/Fruit/Flowers, and 3) Commodity Row Crops.  Using Figure 34, can you predict which crop groups will have the lowest and highest soil health scores?

Table 35 shows the average soil health scores of each of these 3 groups, for Soil Organic Matter, Soil Respiration, Organic Nitrogen, Organic Carbon, Soil Health Score, Total Microbial Biomass, and Number of Fungi, using the Haney and PLFA soil health tests we compiled.

Perennial Hay/Alfalfa/Pastures : The Pasture group had the highest average soil health scores of these three crop groups. Although the Pasture group had lower supplemental water days and lower organic matter added, their very high days of living cover and very high grazing days, along with their very low tillage intensity and lower soil pH seemed to more than make up for their water challenges, in terms of soil health.

Commodity Row Crops : The Commodity crop group had the lowest average scores of these three groups. Although they had done an excellent job of reducing their tillage intensity, that fact alone could not make up for their high soil pH, lowest days of living cover and lowest organic matter added. They had only 2/3rds of the water availability as the Commercial Veg/Flower/Fruit group, which explained their lower days of cover crops that often require fall seeding and fall water. Inter-seeding cover crops aerially or when the main crop is still small were work-a rounds but not always practical. Low commodity prices meant the cost of additional organic matter inputs like compost and manure were hard to justify.

Commercial Veg/Flower/Fruit: The Commercial Veg group had the highest tillage intensity by far, but also triple the organic matter inputs of the other 2 groups. These huge organic matter inputs, along with their longer water season, greater use of cover crops, and lower pH overpowered their intense tillage and boosted their average soil health scores above the commodity crops’ averages. Their longer water season meant they could plant more fall cover crops and string together succession plantings for a longer growing season. Their high value vegetables meant that they could afford organic matter input costs and hauling fees.

#6: VARIABILITY:  We continued to see a great deal of variability in our lab results when we compared sites with themselves year-to-year.

#6A: ORGANIC MATTER INPUTS & GRAZING ANIMALS INCREASE VARIABILITY:
In 2021, we found that grazing animals on site coincided with increased variability in soil organic matter (SOM) data.  In Figure 36, sites were divided into 2 groups: 35 sites with and 21 sites without grazing animals on-site at some point during the year.  When the 3-year variability of soil organic matter data was compared between sites with and without grazing animals, sites with grazing animals clearly showed more variability in SOM data.

In 2022, we looked at the variability of sites with and without both grazing animals and organic matter inputs.  In Figure 37, 71 sites with both grazing animals and organic matter inputs (OMI) were each represented by a quadruplet of data points connected by a vertical black line. Each square-circle-triangle-diamond-black-line combo represents the Soil Organic Matter (SOM) values for one site for 4 years. According to the literature, SOM is supposed to be quite stable and very difficult to change, and yet we saw large swings in individual sites’ SOM data, especially when grazing animals were present or organic matter was imported to the site, as is the case in the first graph below.  We only had 12 sites in our study which had no grazing animals or imported organic matter for 3 or more years. Figure 38 shows that the variability in SOM values for these 12 sites was much less than for sites in the previous graph.

We then sorted our 93 sites into 3 groups and calculated the average variability for each group.  Figure 39 shows that the groups which grazed animals or added organic matter to their sites for 2 consecutive years had approximately three times as much variability in their lab results as the group with NO grazing animals and NO organic matter inputs.

#6B: PAST PRACTICES CAN EXPLAIN SOME BIG VARIABILITY JUMPS

In 2023, we divided our sites into 4 crop categories (Commercial Veg/Flower/Fruit; Commodity Row Crops and Dry-land Grains; Home Gardens; and Perennial Hay/Alfalfa/Pastures) and examined each category’s variability.  Figure 40, Figure 41, Figure 42 and Figure 43 show that an examination of past practices can often explain some of the exceptionally big jumps in variability which we see in every crop group.

In these 4 Figures, each site’s 3-5 years of soil health scores are represented by a column of 3-5 colored data points connected by a vertical black line (a blue square for 2019, red circle for 2020, green triangle for 2021, yellow diamond for 2022, and aqua diamond for 2023). Each square-circle-triangle-diamond-black-ine combo represents the Soil Health Scores for one site for 3-5 years.

These 4 Figures show that Home Gardens and Perennial Hay/Alfalfa/Pastures had the most variable soil health scores year-to-year.  In 2022, we showed that large amounts of organic matter inputs and more days of grazing animals increased variability.  We  also showed that home gardeners applied the highest rates of organic matter to their sites, and we know that grazing animals are usually found in pastures.  Thus, it makes sense that Home Gardens and Perennial Hay/Alfalfa/Pastures would experience the greatest variability in Soil Health Scores.

#6C: CHANGING SOIL SAMPLE DEPTH CAUSES VARIABLE TEST RESULTS

Our growers were instructed to collect the same 8-inch-deep soil samples every year.  They were supposed to collect several vertical cores or slices of the top 8 inches of their soil, across the area they are testing, and mix them all together.  However, dried compacted soils, drought, faded memories, and farm staff turnover meant that often the samples we received were deeper or shallower than 8 inches.  Over the years, we received and processed soil samples ranging from 3 to 18 inches deep.  This is, after all, CITIZEN science.

Microbial life and organic matter are greatest in the top couple of inches of soil.  When you collect a deeper soil sample (10-18 inches deep), you add more soil from deeper down where there is much less organic matter.  That tends to “dilute” the amount of microbial life and organic matter that is in the top couple inches.  That dilution from the deeper soil makes the lab’s reading of your soil organic matter drop.  The inverse is also true.  If you take a very shallow (3-4 inches deep) soil sample one year, it can look like you have made huge progress if you compare it with an 8-inch-deep sample from the previous year, because a much greater percent of the 3” sample is comprised of the top layer of soil where organic matter is the greatest.

Our data confirmed this effect.  In Figure 44, we calculated how much soil sampling depths changed from year to year and compared that with how much soil organic matter (SOM) changed from year to year.  Each data point in the graph represented the change in depth for one site over 2 consecutive years, plotted against the corresponding change in SOM.  Most data points fell into the 2 colored quadrants where shallower soil samples had higher SOM, and deeper soil samples had lower SOM than last year’s sample.  The red trend line confirmed that sample depth affects our SOM values.

However, the data points in this graph were widely scattered, and 30% of the data points fell outside of these 2 colored quadrants.  If sample depth were the only thing affecting SOM, you would have seen all the blue dot data points much more closely clustered around the red trend line, with very few data points in the two white quadrants.  That is not what our data showed.  That meant that other things besides sample depth (management, inputs, environmental factors, etc.) were also affecting the variability we saw in SOM.

#6D: CHARACTERISTICS OF HIGH VARIABILITY VS LOW VARIABILITY SITES

In 2022 we examined the 28 sites which had the most variability in their soil health scores.  We called these sites our “Swingers”, and they were evenly split between organic and conventional growing methods.  Over half the “Swinger” sites were pastures with the rest split evenly between home gardens and commercial vegetable sites.  Their most common crop was grass hay with mixed vegetables coming in second. Their average water season was 127 days long.  “Swinger” sites had an average soil health score of 27.6, which is very high, especially for Colorado.  The growers of these “Swinger” sites were all Soiley Award winners or nominees.  They had adopted many soil health practices, as you can see Figure 45 and Figure 46.

The lesson seemed to be that no good deed goes unpunished.  It seemed that one result of adopting good soil health practices was a great deal of variability in soil health lab results.  If you see your Haney test results bouncing around a lot, year-to-year, it does not necessarily mean that you are doing anything wrong.  It may mean that you are doing many things right.

In 2023, we looked at the 103 sites for which we had 4+ years of data, and compared the sites with the most variable soil health scores (our Swingers) with the sites with the least variable scores (our Parked sites).  We calculated the Percent Relative Range ((maximum score minus minimum score) divided by average score) of soil health scores for each site, and compared the 28 sites with the largest Percent Relative Range (our Swingers) with the 28 sites with the smallest Percent Relative Range (our Parked sites).  Several significant differences became apparent, as shown in this Figure 47.

2/3rds of Swinging sites were pastures, and the majority of Swinging sites used conventional growing methods.  Swinging sites also applied an average of 7.5 T/acre of organic matter inputs, almost half again as much as Parked Sites at 5.6 T/ac.  Almost half of the Parked sites grew mixed vegetables and used reduced tillage.  The most significant difference between the 2 groups was that Swinging sites had 3 times the number of average grazing days as Parked sites. While Swinging and Parked sites had the same numbers of sites with grazing animals, Swinging sites had animals grazing on-site for a much longer period of time.  These findings supported our 2022 findings that more grazing animals and organic matter inputs increase variability.