What is it about?
Soils are the mineral remains of weathered rocks plus the organic remains of biomass, but little is known about how rock type affects soil organic carbon (SOC) levels, a critical soil quality indicator and a major global C pool. Here, we investigate how SOC is affected by soil texture and mineralogy in 8 contrasting soils, derived from very different rocks, in Brazil.
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Why is it important?
There are few ceteris paribus studies on the effect of so many (8) parent materials in soils properties, including SOC, anywhere in the world, but especially in the tropics.
Perspectives
Besides the novel SOC and soil micromorphology data presented, what really makes the difference in this paper is to detect that the effect of soil texture and mineralogy (both properties strongly controlled by the parent material), which is typically strong in tropical lowlands, is not significant where altitudes >900 m a.s.l. These unexpected results have shifted our research efforts considerably.
Dr Yuri L Zinn
Federal University of Lavras
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Soil parent material, texture and oxide contents have little effect on soil organic carbon retention in tropical highlands, Geoderma, August 2017, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.geoderma.2017.04.006.
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