Chemical contaminants—such as explosives from unexploded ordnance and impact—found within cratered areas on military firing ranges are subject to environmental fate and transport processes. Depending on the solubility and charge of the pollutant, soils with higher fractions of organic carbon and/or higher cation exchange capacities may inhibit movement of contaminants and provide time for contaminant transformation and degradation to take place before resources such as groundwater are impacted. Cation exchange capacity should allow the use of the retardation factor approach in determining the relative risk for organic contaminant releases to soils. A soil property investigation, involving the collection of soil samples from an active impact area and subsequent mathematical modeling and statistical analysis of soil laboratory results, was used to determine the soil properties that best predict soil cation exchange capacity and describe crater disturbance, in terms of the resulting loss of organic matter. Organic matter content of the soil, in this study, proved to be a good predictor of cation exchange capacity and also a good descriptor of munitions disturbance. Because soil organic matter has an influence on contaminant fate and transport through the environment, and because its availability is affected by munitions disturbance, resource managers should be concerned with the effect of munitions use on soil organic matter dynamics.