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A catena is a series of distinct but co-evolving soils arrayed along a slope. On low-slope, slowly eroding catenas the redistribution of mass occurs predominantly as plasma, the dissolved and suspended constituents in soil water. We applied mass balance methods to track how redistribution via plasma contributed to physical and geochemical differentiation of nine slowly eroding (~ 5 mm ky − 1 ) granitic catenas. The catenas were arrayed in a 3 × 3 climate by relief matrix and located in Kruger National Park, South Africa. Most of the catenas contained at least one illuviated soil profile that had undergone more volumetric expansion and less mass loss, and these soils were located in the lower halves of the slopes. By comparison, the majority of slope positions were eluviated. Soils from the wetter climates (550 and 730 mm precipitation yr − 1 ) generally had undergone greater collapse and lost more mass, while soils in the drier climate (470 mm yr − 1 ) had undergone expansion and lost less mass. Effects of differences in catena relief were less clear. Within each climate zone, soil horizon mass loss and strain were correlated, as were losses of most major elements, illustrating the predominant influence of primary mineral weathering. Nevertheless, mass loss and volumetric collapse did not become extreme because of the skeleton of resistant primary mineral grains inherited from the granite. Colloidal clay redistribution, as traced by the ratio of Ti to Zr in soil, suggested clay losses via suspension from catena eluvial zones. Thus illuviation of colloidal clays into downslope soils may be crucial to catena development by restricting subsurface flow there. Our analysis provides quantitative support for the conceptual understanding of catenas in cratonic landscapes and provides an endmember reference point in understanding the development of slowly eroding soil landscapes.

Weathering and leaching can progressively deplete the pools of soluble, rock-derived elements in soils and ecosystems over millennial time-scales, such that productivity increasingly relies on inputs from atmospheric deposition. This transition has been explored using strontium isotopes, which have been widely assumed to be a proxy for the provenance of other rock-derived elements. We compared rock versus atmospheric proportions of strontium to those for sulfur, a plant macronutrient, at several tropical forest sites in Hawaii and Costa Rica. Isotopic analyses reveal that sulfur is often decoupled from strontium in the transition to atmospheric dependence. Decoupling is likely the result of differences in chemical factors such as atmospheric input rates, mobility in the soil environment, and mineral weathering susceptibility. Strontium and sulfur decoupling appears to be accentuated by the physical process of erosion. Erosion rates are presumed to be high on the Osa Peninsula of Costa Rica, where the recent onset of rapid tectonic uplift has placed the landscape in a transient state. Decoupling is strong there, as erosion has rejuvenated the supply of rock-derived strontium but not sulfur. The landscape response to changes in tectonic uplift on the Osa Peninsula has produced decoupling at the landscape scale. Decoupling is more variable along a Hawaiian catena, presumably due to smaller scale variations in erosion rates and their influence on rejuvenation of rock-strontium inputs. These results illustrate how chemical and physical processes can interact to produce contrasting origins for different nutrient elements in soils and the ecosystems they support.