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Abstract
El estudio de la hojarasca es un tema de interés en la actualidad en estudios ambientales debido a su papel en el ciclaje de nutrientes, especialmente en regiones como la de los Andes, donde las interacciones entre las especies forestales exóticas y los suelos son pobremente entendidas. Este trabajo se enfoca en el estudio de la producción de hojarasca bajo plantaciones de pino en el sur del Ecuador. Para el efecto, se estudió la producción de hojarasca durante cinco meses monitoreando su acumulación cada dos semanas en tres sitios de plantaciones de pino localizados en el sur de los Andes del Ecuador. La producción mensual varió entre 1067 a 1907 kg ha-1. Los valores reportados en este estudio revelaron una elevada producción comparado con otros estudios en coníferas desarrollados en regiones de otras latitudes, mostrándose que la producción de los Andes es la mayor. Esta alta producción de hojarasca resalta la gran importancia de este componente forestal como un reservorio potencial de nutrientes que participaría en el ciclaje general de nutrientes bajo ecosistemas dominados por esta especie exótica en los Andes tropicales.
Highlights
Among various biogeochemical processes that occur in forest environments, the formation of organic matter and its subsequent decomposition are of upmost importance, being the last one the more attractive to study in our days (Berg & Laskowski, 2005; Osman, 2013; Berg, 2014; Berg, Kjønaas, Johansson, Erhagen, & Åkerblom, 2015)
Differences in litterfall production could be attributed to several environmental factors (Berg & McClaugherty, 2014), at global scale climatic factors are controlling the litterfall production (Liu et al, 2004), and based on this assumption and due to the scarcity of data for pine litterfall production in the tropics, we have developed our analysis
The nutrient content pattern for the litterfall was: N>K>P (7.14%, 2.34%, 0.95%, respectively), this trend is consistent with the reported by Ramirez et al (2014) in pine plantations located in montane Andean forest region in Colombia
Summary
Among various biogeochemical processes that occur in forest environments, the formation of organic matter and its subsequent decomposition are of upmost importance, being the last one the more attractive to study in our days (Berg & Laskowski, 2005; Osman, 2013; Berg, 2014; Berg, Kjønaas, Johansson, Erhagen, & Åkerblom, 2015). Litterfall is the primary source of organic matter for soils under forest environments (Berg & Laskowski, 2005; Berg & McClaugherty, 2014). Litterfall is related to chemical processes involved in the transfer of nutrients and energy from vegetation to the soils, becoming a key link in biogeochemical cycles (Liu et al, 2004; Paudel, Dossa, Xu, & Harrison, 2015). The study of litterfall production under several types of forests has been a topic widely discussed in different latitudes of our planet (Chave et al, 2010; Berg & McClaugherty, 2014); for the Andes region its study is scarce, and for exotic pine plantations in this region is even more
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