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Soils Along the Altitudinal Transect and in Catchments

2008; Springer Nature; Linguagem: Inglês

10.1007/978-3-540-73526-7_9

2196-971X

Wolfgang Wilcke, Syafrimen Yasin, Andrea Schmitt, Carlos Valarezo, W. Zech,

Botany and Geology in Latin America and Caribbean

In the literature, it is well documented that there are systematic changes in soil properties and thus in soil fertility along altitudinal gradients in tropical mountains (e.g., Marrs et al. 1988; Grieve et al. 1990; Schrumpf et al. 2001). Grieve et al. (1990) reported increasing soil organic matter concentrations along an altitudinal transect from 100 m to 2600 m a.s.l. in Costa Rica. Furthermore, it has been reported for several forests that C/N ratios increase with increasing altitude (Edwards and Grubb 1982; Schrumpf et al. 2001). Mineralization rates are negatively correlated with the C/N ratio and the lignin and polyphenol concentrations (Tian et al. 1995). Consequently, N mineralization and nitrification rates decrease with increasing altitude (Marrs et al. 1988). For the study area in Ecuador, it was shown that the pH and N concentrations decrease and C/N ratio and hydromorphic properties increase with increasing altitude between 1850 m and 3050 m a.s.l. in a previous study (Schrumpf et al. 2001).