Tropical forests are a significant global source of the greenhouse gas nitrous oxide (N2O). Predicted environmental changes for this biome highlight the need to understand how simultaneous changes in precipitation and labile carbon (C) availability may affect soil N 2O production. We conducted a small-scale throughfall and leaf litter manipulation in a lowland tropical forest in southwestern Co...

Dung beetle communities have been compared across north temperate latitudes. Tropical dung beetle communities appear to be more diverse based on studies using different methodologies. Here, we present results from a standardized sampling protocol used to compare dung beetle communities across five neotropical forests in Brazil and Ecuador and two warm, north temperate forests in Mississippi and...

The possibility of carbon (C) being locked away from the atmosphere for millennia is given in hydromorphic soils. However, the water-table-dependent feedback from soil organic matter (SOM) decomposition to the climate system is less clear. At least three greenhouse gases are produced: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). These gases show emission peaks at different water...

SOILS in the humid tropics are known for their low retention capacity of nutrients and high susceptibility to leaching (Van Wambeke, 1992). Nitrogen is particularly susceptible to leaching losses since mineralization and nitrification both proceed very rapidly under humid tropical conditions and because nitrate is very mobile in most soils. In central Amazonian Oxisols, a large accumulation of ...

Plant growth is directly affected by soil water, soil aeration, and soil resistance to root penetration. The least limiting water range (LLWR) is de®ned as the range in soil water content within which limitations to plant growth associated with water potential, aeration and soil resistance to root penetration are minimal. The LLWR has not been evaluated in tropical soils. Thus, the objective of...

Soil heterogeneity is an important driver of divergent natural selection in plants. Neotropical forests have the highest tree diversity on earth, and frequently, soil specialist congeners are distributed parapatrically. While the role of edaphic heterogeneity in the origin and maintenance of tropical tree diversity is unknown, it has been posited that natural selection across the patchwork of s...

Resource partitioning has been hypothesized to play a role in the maintenance of tree diversity in tropical forests. We looked for evidence of light and soil moisture partitioning among seedlings of four native Malagasy tree species, the pioneer, gap-adapted species Harungana madagascariensis and the three shade-tolerant species Ocotea cymosa, Stephanostegia capuronii and Uapaca ferruginea. Fou...

Hydrological modeling of the unsaturated soil zone fluxes allows the transfer processes simulation through the hydrological active soil zone. The pedotransfer functions (FTP) are useful tools in the modeling process. They contain analytical functions derived through statistic optimization process using a large amount of soil information data. This paper aims to analyze the level of reliability ...

SSSAJ: Volume 75: Number 4 • July–August 2011 Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 75:1520-1529 Posted online 7 June 2011 doi:10.2136/sssaj2010.0390 Received 13 Oct. 2010. *Corresponding author ([email protected]). © Soil Science Society of America, 5585 Guilford Rd., Madison WI 53711 USA All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic ...

The formation and stabilization of soil aggregates play a key role in soil functions. To date, few studies have been performed on the variation of soil aggregation with increasing soil weathering degree. Here, soil aggregation and its influencing factors along the weathering gradient were investigated. Six typical zonal soils (derived from similar parent materials) were sampled from temperate t...