Succession from meadow to mature forest: Impacts on soil biological, chemical and physical properties—Evidence from the Pieniny Mountains, Poland

Abstract

Long-term human agricultural activity in the Carpathian region created meaningful landscape transformations; for example, valuable and high-biodiversity, semi-natural areas were formed. Subsequently, socioeconomic changes after World War II started a trend of decreasing agricultural activity and pasturing, as well as the abandonment of higher-altitude and more-difficult-to-access meadows. As a result, in many cases, landscape transformation, such as secondary forest succession, began to occur. This study examined the influence of natural forest succession by comparing a semi-natural meadow to a 25-year-old forest succession area and an old-growth forested area, taking into account selected soil physical, chemical and biological properties. The study sought to answer the following questions: where are the greater carbon stocks found — in meadows, forest successions or old-growth forests?; does soil microbial activity change during succession?; and does succession cause changes in soil physical properties? The research area was located in Pieniny National Park in southern Poland. No significant differences in the amount of carbon stock or the microbial activity (i.e. microbial biomass carbon content and dehydrogenase activity) were found among the meadow, succession and old-growth forest soil samples. However, the old-growth forest soils showed a much higher invertase activity than the succession and meadow soils. Nevertheless, when we took into consideration variables associated with the microbial properties, and placed these into an ordination space, more visible differences among the meadow, succession and forest samples became apparent. Thus, any discussion of land use in mountainous areas should take multiple aspects into account.