Evaluating the effects of land management systems on soil characteristics: some confounding problems in experimental design

TL;DRAbstract

A series of research projects over the last decade have had some unexpected outcomes, at least partly from the effects of confounding by uncontrolled variation in factors outside the experimental design. The most pervasive is the overarching effect of the land manager, their paradigm, commitment, motivation, competence and application. To compare land management systems, most experimental designs compare two or more adjacent or close by operations, and take great care taken to standardise the non variable biophysical factors (soil types underlying geology, etc) and system factors, (seed, fertiliser regimes, tillage, livestock type and number, overall grazing rates, etc), but how does the researcher standardise for land manager variation? Even fence line contrasts between systems on the same landholders land suffer from the attitudes and motivation of the land manager. The other, and an equally difficult issue to control relates to seemingly inconsequential differences not considered in

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