Quantitative Analysis of Pedogenic Thresholds and Domains in Volcanic Soils.

ABSTRACT: Pedogenic thresholds describe where soil properties or processes change in an abrupt/nonlinear fashion in response to small changes in environmental forcing. Contrastingly, soil process domains refer to the space between thresholds where soil properties are either unchanged, or change gradually, across a broad range of environmental forcing. Here, we test quantitatively for the presence of thresholds in patterns of soil properties across a climatic gradient on soils developed from ~20 ky old basaltic substrate on the Island of Hawai'i. From multiple soil properties, we quantitatively identified a threshold at ~750 mm/y of water balance (precipitation minus potential evapotranspiration), delineating the upper water balance boundary of soil fertility in these soils. From the threshold in the

SUBMITTER: Bateman JB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7079697 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature