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Short-range order mineral phases control the distribution of important macronutrients in coarse-textured forest soils of coastal British Columbia, Canada

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Abstract

Background and aims

Secondary minerals are known to provide sorption sites that contribute significantly to plant nutrient retention within the soil profile. The influence of mineral components on nutrient availability is however less certain in coarse-textured soils, where the abundance of clay minerals is low. The objective of this study is to identify important edaphic predictors of nutrient distribution in coarse-textured forest soils.

Methods

We measured base cations, nitrogen and phosphorus forms in the organic, mineral top- and subsoil horizons of podzols of southwestern Canada and investigated their relation to soil properties using simple and canonical correlation analysis.

Results

We found that soil organic carbon and reactive aluminum and iron species were stronger predictors of nutrient distribution than the silt and clay content. In particular, short-range order (SRO) Al and Fe mineral phases were strongly correlated with the distribution of potassium and phosphorus. Preferential association of K with SRO phases likely contributed to K retention in the profile. Phosphorus sorption to SRO phases decreased the amount of available P. Contrary to generally expected geochemical behaviour, labile P was negatively related to pH. We attributed this anomalous relation to an increase in the proportion of strongly sorptive SRO Al and Fe phases at higher pH.

Conclusion

This study shows that understanding the sorptive properties of naturally-occurring SRO Al and Fe species is important to our ability to predict nutrient availability and points to the need for further investigation of the geochemical behaviour of SRO mineral phases under field conditions.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada Discovery Grant. We thank Dr. Robert Hudson for his help with study design and field logistics as well as Drs. Cindy Prescott and Hans Schreier for invaluable comments on an earlier version of this report. We also thank field assistants Marina Romeo and Peter Shanahan, laboratory manager Carol Dyck and laboratory technician Keren Ferguson for their assistance with field sampling and analyses. Finally, we wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for exceptional insights on an earlier version of this manuscript.

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  1. Soil Water Air Laboratory, University of British Columbia, 2357 Main Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T1Z4, Canada

    Stephanie Grand & Les M. Lavkulich

  2. Department of Forestry, Michigan State University, 480 Wilson Road, Rm 126 Natural Resources Bldg, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Stephanie Grand

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Grand, S., Lavkulich, L.M. Short-range order mineral phases control the distribution of important macronutrients in coarse-textured forest soils of coastal British Columbia, Canada. Plant Soil 390, 77–93 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11104-014-2372-6

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