Nicolas Jelinski

University of Minnesota Twin Cities | UMN · Department of Soil, Water, and Climate

Student‐student interactions are influential parts of field experiences. While competitive judging events are a fun way to engage students in field‐based learning, the focus on competition leads to an atmosphere that discourages collaboration between students. The objective of this study was to evaluate the cognitive and affective learning outcomes...

Cold region soils are increasingly impacted by anthropogenic activities and climatic change. Despite their cold character, these unique soils are highly dynamic. Low temperatures depress but do not stop biochemical reactions. This results in high rates of carbon accumulation, and slow but significant chemical modification. Volumetric expansion and...

Cold region soils are strikingly beautiful, highly diverse, globally important and increasing affected by anthropogenic activities and climatic change. In this chapter, we examine the global distribution and unique and diverse characteristics of these soils through a focus on their genesis and classification in each of the three major zones of cold...

As with many aspects of teaching, the COVID‐19 pandemic forced soil judging teams to attempt new strategies towards achieving student learning outcomes. Soil judging Regions IV and V hosted remote regional contests in October 2020 in place of traditional, in‐person contests typically held each fall. We conducted pre‐ and post‐contest surveys to ass...

The availability of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) controls the flow of carbon (C) among plants, soils, and the atmosphere, thereby shaping terrestrial ecosystem responses to global change. Soil C, N, and P cycles are linked by drivers operating at multiple spatial and temporal scales: landscape‐level variation in macroclimate and soil geochemistr...

This study investigated differences in forest structure, organic layer thickness, soil organic carbon, and permafrost depth between late successional (LS) and post fire (PF, 90 to 120 years since burn) plots under black spruce (Picea mariana (Mill.) BSP) on fine-textured, poorly drained lacustrine sediments in the Copper River Basin, Alaska. We fou...

At the local scale in Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP), MN, urban farms, community gardens, and home gardens support diverse individual and community goals, including food access and sovereignty, recreation and outdoor activity, youth education, and racial, economic, and environmental justice. Collaborations between urban growers, policymakers, scholars,...

Interacting with practitioners and understanding multiple, contradictory, and complex perspectives is an important skill for effectively managing terrestrial resources in the 21st century. Addressing these needs requires innovative approaches in higher education that elevate student learning outcomes (SLOs) and emphasize the affective learning doma...

Mollisols are dark colored, carbon‐rich mineral soils occupying a large proportion (836 soil series) of the soils of the Central Plains of the United States. By contrast, only eight official soil series of Mollisols have been mapped in Alaska (six Haplocryolls, one Calcicryoll, one Haplogeloll). Little information exists about Geloll pedogenesis, t...

Coal is an important natural resource for global energy production. However, certain types of coal (e.g., lignite) often contain abundant sulfur (S) which can lead to gaseous sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions when burned. Such emissions subsequently create sulfuric acid (H2SO4), thus causing highly acidic rain which can alter the pH of soil and surfac...

In the Alaskan discontinuous permafrost zone, soils developed under black spruce [ Picea mariana (Mill.) Britton, Sterns & Poggenb.] forests are affected by fire over return intervals ranging from decades to centuries and cycle between recently burned and late‐successional stages. Soils under late‐successional forests therefore provide foundational...

Meteoric beryllium-10 ( ¹⁰ Be m , t 1/2 = 1.4 Myr) is a cosmogenic radionuclide that remains largely underutilized for deriving hillslope-scale estimates of erosion on uplands under conditions of land use change. We applied two different models for estimating erosion rates from observed ¹⁰ Be m concentrations (a one-dimensional model predicting ver...

The interaction of soil organic matter (SOM) and minerals is a critical mechanism for retaining SOM in soil and protecting soil fertility and long-term agricultural sustainability. The chemical speciation of carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) in mineral-associated SOM can be sensitive to both anthropogenic management practices and landscape positions, but...

Most hillslope studies examining the interplay between climate and earth surface processes tend to be biased towards eroding parts of landscapes. This limitation makes it difficult to assess how entire upland landscapes, which are mosaics of eroding and depositional areas, evolve physio-chemically as a function of climate. Here we combine new soil...

Improved soil information in tropical montane regions is critical for conservation, sustainable agricultural management, and land use planning, but is often challenged by topographic and land-use heterogeneity. The West Usambara mountains are a part of the Eastern Arc chain of mountains of Tanzania and Kenya, a globally important tropical montane e...

Seventy-four F. oxysporum soil isolates were assayed for known effector genes present in an F. oxysporum f.sp. lycopersici race 3 tomato wilt strain (FOL MN-25) obtained from the same fields in Manatee County, Florida. Based on the presence or absence of these genes, four haplotypes were defined, two of which represented 96% of the surveyed isolate...

The empirical quantification of rates of material movement in cryoturbated soils has lagged behind the physical and chemical characterisation of these materials. We applied a novel suite of elemental (C, Hg), stable isotope (13C) and radioisotope (137Cs, 210Pb, 14C, 10Be) tracers in conjunction with analytical and numerical models to constrain the...

Biogeoscience is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field that aims to bring together biological and geophysical processes. This book builds an enhanced understanding of ecosystems by focusing on the integrative connections between ecological processes and the geosphere, hydrosphere and atmosphere. Each chapter provides studies by researchers who...

The delineation and mapping of eroded phases of existing soil series has been an important activity throughout the history of soil survey activities in the United States, with implications for land management, crop production and the estimation of historical sediment losses and fluxes. An analysis of the SSURGO database shows that 462,979 km2 of er...

Land-use change continues at an alarming rate in sub-Saharan Africa adversely affecting ecosystem services provided by soil. These impacts are greatly understudied, especially in biodiversity rich mountains in East Africa. The objectives of this study were to: conduct a biophysical baseline of soil and land health; assess the effects of cultivation...

Deep-sea ferromanganese nodules accumulate trace elements from seawater and underlying sediment porewaters during the growth of concentric mineral layers over millions of years. These trace elements have the potential to record past ocean geochemical conditions. The goal of this study was to determine whether Fe mineral alteration occurs and how th...

The central concept of temperate zones are geographic regions characterized by continental climates with significant seasonal differences in temperature. Soil temperature and soil moisture regimes (STR and SMR, respectively) can more appropriately define climatic regions with regard to pedological processes. Temperate region soils can typically be...

The human alteration of agricultural landscapes is one of the most important factors in pedologic and geomorphic change, and can influence hydrology and aquatic chemistry at large scales. Most of the Midwestern Corn Belt that is currently dominated by subsurface tile drainage (such as southern Minnesota) was historically prairie and wetland which h...

Conceptual restoration models depict strong correlations between structure and function, with both decreasing as an ecosystem is degraded and increasing during restoration. We evaluated the “linear” and “asymptotic” models by measuring diversity and annual net primary productivity (NPP) within four states of a southern Wisconsin floodplain: a remna...

Wet prairie soils in the Midwest store significant amounts of soil organic carbon (SOC) and total nitrogen (TN). Crop fields, prairie restorations of varying ages, and remnant prairies on a floodplain soil (Fine-silty, mixed, superactive, mesic Typic Endoaquolls) ill Southern Wisconsin were intensively sampled to estimate changes in SOC and TN due...

There is an emerging need to estimate and verify soil carbon credits attributed to conservation tillage and prairie restoration in the Midwestern U.S. for the developing global carbon market. However, current soil sampling strategies may need to be augmented by empirical modeling to minimize costs while covering larger regions. Models were construc...

Croton alabamensis (Euphorbiaceae s.s.) is a rare plant species known from several populations in Texas and Alabama that have been assigned to var. texensis and var. alabamensis, respectively. We performed maximum parsimony, maximum likelihood, and Bayesian analyses of DNA sequences from the nuclear ribosomal internal transcribed spacer (ITS) and 5...