Table 3 Summary of soil pore characteristics for the studied prairie and monoculture switchgrass systems at the two topographical positions after plant growth experiment.

From: Pore architecture and particulate organic matter in soils under monoculture switchgrass and restored prairie in contrasting topography

Topography

System

Pores > 18.2 um (%)

Pore connectivity (%)

Treatment

Control

Plant

Control

Plant

Depression

Prairie

13.7

16.9

88.0

94.0

Switchgrass

10.5*

16.0

78.6*

94.6

Slope

Prairie

16.9

16.8

91.4

92.0

Switchgrass

16.5

17.9

92.8

93.2

Standard error

0.01

0.02

  1. Shown are means (n = 6) and standard errors for each system and topographical position in control and plant-grown cores treatment.
  2. Stars (*) indicate significant differences between plant-grown and control cores within each topography (p < 0.05) in each cropping system; upper case letters indicate significant differences between topographies in plant-grown cores (p < 0.05) in each cropping system and, lower case letters indicate significant differences between the cropping systems within each topographical position in plant-grown cores (p < 0.05). No * or letters are shown when the differences were not statistically significant.
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