Soils response to the land use and soil climatic gradients at ecosystem scale: Mineralogical and geochemical data

Abstract

Ecosystem in responses to land use change create feedbacks in soils and ecological processes in Critical Zone (CZ). The identification and quantification of such changes is needed as a part of understanding the relationship between climate, CO2 emission, humidity, biological activity, soil carbon, surface redox, and plant nutrient cycling and lithology, mineralogy, biogeochemistry of bedrocks. The CZ observation as complex investigation of three Luvic Phaezoem soils under secondary deciduous forest, grassland and cropland from Moscow region, Russia, was fulfilled with the main goal to study weathering processes in soils along global gradients of environmental change. Detailed study of mineralogy and chemistry (XRD, XRF), surface area, porosity, organic matter, carbon/microbial biomass, moisture content, monitoring of total soil respiration was performed. Ecosystem in responses to land use change the parameters of CZ (CO2 emission, humidity, biological activity). Land use change result in climate parameter on a local scale (soil climatic gradients) and formed feedback in weathering intensity and basic soil properties-organic matter, acidity, bulk density, WHC, surface properties and porosity, mineralogy and geochemical changes. The decreasing of smectites in the upper parts of the profile and the increasing of illite and vermiculite content was observed. Montmorillonite into vermiculite transformation, which took place only under the forest, which caused the decreasing of pH, soil vermiculite may also derive from muscovite. The intensity of the given process increases as the following: forest soil <grassland <cropland. The given tendency was explained by both the mineral transformations and redistribution of mineral components within the soil profile. The redistribution of chemical elements between the different sub-fractions of silt and clay is in relationship to the land use. As a general trend, we can conclude that clay fractions in a comparison with bulk soil samples are enriched in both OC and N. Mineralogical and chemical changes influenced the surface properties and porosity. The 50–150 years of different land use resulted in these feedbacks with maximum in aboveground zone and soils as main point of surface of a given CZ.