Abstract
In several areas in Northeast Thailand, evergreen and deciduous forests coexist under uniform climatic conditions. To identify the factors that determine the distribution of these different forest types, we compared soil depth and soil physical properties between evergreen and deciduous forests, and monitored soil moisture conditions for a year in both forest types at the Sakaerat Environmental Research Station. The soil was significantly deeper under the evergreen forests (mean 97 cm) than under the deciduous forest (mean 64 cm). The soil under the evergreen forests retained much more water throughout the year than the soil under the deciduous forest, and there was also a clear tendency for the evergreen forests to occur in ravine areas, regardless of soil depth. It is possible that the evergreen trees can maintain transpiration during the dry season on thicker soils or in ravine areas, whereas shallower soils cannot provide enough water for these trees to maintain their evapotranspiration during the dry period. From the present study, we showed that soil water availability could be a significant factor determining the distribution of the deciduous and evergreen forests in our catchments.
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Acknowledgments
We thank all the staff members of the Sakaerat Environmental Research Station who kindly assisted our fieldwork and the staff members of Kansai Research Center, Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute, for the help with the analysis of soil physical properties in the laboratory. This study was supported by grants-in-aid from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (18255011) and the Japanese Ministry of the Environment (C-05-052).
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Murata, N., Ohta, S., Ishida, A. et al. Soil depth and soil water regime in a catchment where tropical dry evergreen and deciduous forests coexist. J For Res 17, 37–44 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10310-010-0248-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10310-010-0248-z