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Topography-soil relationships in a hilly evergreen broadleaf forest in subtropical China

  • Soils, Sec 5 • Soil and Landscape Ecology • Research Article
  • Published:
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Abstract

Purpose

Topography-soil relationships usually vary with climate, vegetation type, degree of human disturbance, type of parent material, and the scale being studied. In this paper, we studied the topography-soil relationship in a hilly forest in subtropical China.

Materials and methods

The influence of topography on soil properties (soil moisture, organic carbon (C), total nitrogen (N) and total phosphorus contents, C:N ratio, and pH) was evaluated using a recursive partitioning conditional inference tree (CIT) as well as a multiple linear regression (MLR) method.

Results and discussion

The CIT models generally performed better than MLR in describing the topography-soil relationships. Topographic parameters chosen by the CIT models, which indicate the mechanisms at play for the spatial variation of the soil properties, varied with the soil property of concern. The soil moisture, organic C, and total N models contained only primary terrain attributes, the soil C:N ratio and pH models contained both primary and secondary terrain attributes, while the total phosphorus model contained mostly secondary terrain attributes.

Conclusions

The CIT method worked well for exploring the topography-soil relationships in the studied undisturbed hilly forest. We conclude that (1) soil moisture, organic C, and total N were strongly affected by location-specific topographic features such as gravitational potential, the amount of precipitation, temperature, and vegetation type; (2) total phosphorus was affected by catchment-related hydrological activities and soil C:N ratio; and (3) pH was affected by location-specific topographic features and catchment-related hydrological activities.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the National Science Foundation of China (31210103920), Chinese Academy of Sciences and Technology of Strategic Pilot Projects (XDA0505020401), and the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada for funding.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Renewable Resources, University of Alberta, T6G 2E3, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

    Xiaopeng Li & Scott X. Chang

  2. Institute of Soil Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210008, People’s Republic of China

    Xiaopeng Li

  3. State Key Laboratory of Hydrology-Water Resources and Hydraulic Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, 210098, People’s Republic of China

    Jintao Liu

  4. Tiantong National Station of Forest Ecosystems, Chinese National Ecosystem Observation and Research Network, Ningbo, Zhejiang, 315114, People’s Republic of China

    Zemei Zheng & Xihua Wang

  5. College of Resources and Environmental Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, People’s Republic of China

    Zemei Zheng & Xihua Wang

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  1. Xiaopeng Li
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Correspondence to Xihua Wang.

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Li, X., Chang, S.X., Liu, J. et al. Topography-soil relationships in a hilly evergreen broadleaf forest in subtropical China. J Soils Sediments 17, 1101–1115 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-016-1573-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11368-016-1573-4

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