Calcium is a critical component of soil. It is essential to plants in forming cell walls, cell division, and determining permeability of the cell membrane (Helper, 2005). Calcium can also cause soil to become more alkaline, or basic, which increases the availability of other nutrients (such as to plants.   Without calcium, plants can suffer from blossom end rot, difficulty reducing nitrates, difficulty synthesizing proteins, stunted growth, leaf discoloration, and death (Skok, n.d.).

    Factors that determine the calcium levels in soil include the type of bedrock, pH levels, how much plants absorb, and any soil treatments used by farmers (i.e., bone marrow, eggshells, fertilizers, lime applications).  Calcium is found in numerous soil minerals, including lime, gypsum, and superphosphate (Kelling and Schulte, 2004), but limestone bedrock is one of its most significant sources in Eastern deciduous forests. The calcium in limestone can be broken down by weathering, when the carbonic acid found in rainfall dissolves it (Anthony Bennet, 2009).  In addition, limestone bedrock is eroded by water- sometimes from storm runoff through stormwater management systems with buried holding tanks (Lake Superior Streams, 2010).  A storm runoff management system is a system that either collects or diverts rainwater runoff in order to prevent erosion of topsoil and floods.

an eroded limestone bedrock

     During the 2010 E.S.S.R.E. Biota Survey (E.S.S.R.E., 2010), unusually high calcium levels (1616 ppm) were found in E.S.S.R.E. Site 3 (E.S.S.R.E., 2010).  Past years’ data (E.S.S.R.E., 2009) reveals that the calcium levels in Site 3 started increasing significantly in 2008 E.S.S.R.E., the year Roland Park Country School began construction on a new athletic center that is adjacent to Site 3.

 Given that Site 3 sits on an exposed patch of limestone bedrock, and that the release valve for the stormwater management system releases runoff from the field of the athletic center into Site 3, we hypothesized that this runoff might be dissolving the calcium carbonate and was creating the high calcium concentration in the surrounding soil. 

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