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Biogeochemical implications of labile phosphorus in forest soils determined by the Hedley fractionation procedure

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Abstract

Forest ecologists and biogeochemists have used a variety of extraction techniques to assess labile vs. non-labile soil P pools in chronosequences, the balance between biological vs. geochemical control of P transformations across a wide range of soil orders, the role of plants with either N-fixing or mycorrhizal symbionts in controlling soil P fractions, and to make inferences about plant-available P. Currently, variants of the sequential extraction procedure developed by M. J. Hedley and co-workers afford the greatest discrimination among labile and non-labile organic and inorganic P pools. Results of recent studies that used this technique to evaluate P fractions in forest soils indicate the following: (1) in intact, highly weathered forest soils of the humid tropics, Hedley-labile P values are several times larger than extractable P values resulting from mildly acidic extracting solutions which were commonly used in the past 2 decades; (2) pools of Hedley-labile P are several times larger than the annual forest P requirement and P required from the soil annually in both temperate and tropical forests; (3) long-term trends in non-labile P pools during pedogenesis are adequately represented by the Walker and Syers' model of changes in P fractionation during soil development. However, to better represent trends in pools that can supply plant-available P across forest soils of different age and weathering status, the paradigm should be modified; and (4) across a wide range of tropical and temperate forest soils, organic matter content is an important determinant of Hedley-labile P.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Marty Dranoff for his help in the laboratory, Phil Sollins, Fred Scatena and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on early versions of this paper. This work was supported by grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the National Science Foundation (DEB 9705814).

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  1. Department of Earth and Environmental Science, The University of Pennsylvania, 240 S. 33rd St., Philadelphia, PA 19104-6316, USA

    Arthur H. Johnson, Jaqueline Frizano & David R. Vann

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  1. Arthur H. Johnson
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Correspondence to Arthur H. Johnson.

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Johnson, A.H., Frizano, J. & Vann, D.R. Biogeochemical implications of labile phosphorus in forest soils determined by the Hedley fractionation procedure. Oecologia 135, 487–499 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-002-1164-5

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