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Soil properties discriminating Araucaria forests with different disturbance levels

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Abstract

Soil biological, chemical, and physical properties can be important for monitoring soil quality under one of the most spectacular vegetation formation on Atlantic Forest Biome, the Araucaria Forest. Our aim was to identify a set of soil variables capable of discriminating between disturbed, reforested, and native Araucaria forest soils such that these variables could be used to monitor forest recovery and maintenance. Soil samples were collected at dry and rainy season under the three forest types in two state parks at São Paulo State, Brazil. Soil biological, chemical, and physical properties were evaluated to verify their potential to differentiate the forest types, and discriminant analysis was performed to identify the variables that most contribute to the differentiation. Most of physical and chemical variables were sensitive to forest disturbance level, but few biological variables were significantly different when comparing native, reforested, and disturbed forests. Despite more than 20 years following reforestation, the reforested soils were chemically and biologically distinct from native and disturbed forest soils, mainly because of the greater acidity and Al3+ content of reforested soil. Disturbed soils, in contrast, were coarser in texture and contained greater concentrations of extractable P. Although biological properties are generally highly sensitive to disturbance and amelioration efforts, the most important soil variables to discriminate forest types in both seasons included Al3+, Mg2+, P, and sand, and only one microbial attribute: the NO2 − oxidizers. Therefore, these five variables were the best candidates, of the variables we employed, for monitoring Araucaria forest disturbance and recovery.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Mrs Pedrina Demétrio Conceição, Alto Ribeira Tourist State Park and Campos do Jordão State Park administration for permitting access to the areas where research was conducted. We also thank Denise Mescolotti and Luis Fernando Baldesin for their help with laboratory work. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments.

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Funding

This study was funded by FAPESP - Projeto Biota (Project no 2001/05146-6).

Conflict of interest

S.C.B. Bertini has received research grants from CAPES and FAPESP (Project no 2007/06943-3).

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, 38400-902, Brazil

    Simone Cristina Braga Bertini

  2. Instituto de Ciências Agrárias, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, 38400-902, Brazil

    Lucas Carvalho Basilio Azevedo

  3. Department of Soil and Crop Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO, 80523-1170, USA

    Mary E. Stromberger

  4. Departamento de Ciência do Solo, Escola Superior de Agricultura “Luiz de Queiroz” – ESALQ/USP, Piracicaba, 13418-900, Brazil

    Simone Cristina Braga Bertini & Elke Jurandy Bran Nogueira Cardoso

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  1. Simone Cristina Braga Bertini
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  2. Lucas Carvalho Basilio Azevedo
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  4. Elke Jurandy Bran Nogueira Cardoso
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Bertini, S.C.B., Azevedo, L.C.B., Stromberger, M.E. et al. Soil properties discriminating Araucaria forests with different disturbance levels. Environ Monit Assess 187, 194 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10661-015-4398-5

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