1. Disproportionate single-species contribution to canopy-soil nutrient flux in an Amazonian rainforest.
- Author
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Germer, Sonja, Zimmermann, Alexander, Neill, Christopher, Krusche, Alex V., and Elsenbeer, Helmut
- Subjects
FOREST canopies ,SPECIES ,PALMS ,RAIN forests ,FOREST soils ,NUTRIENT cycles ,BIOGEOCHEMISTRY ,SOIL moisture ,DENITRIFICATION - Abstract
Abstract: Rainfall, throughfall and stemflow were monitored on an event basis in an undisturbed open tropical rainforest with a large number of palm trees located in the southwestern Amazon basin of Brazil. Stemflow samples were collected from 24 trees with a diameter at breast height (DBH)>5cm, as well as eight young and four full-grown babassu palms (Attalea speciosa Mart.) for 5weeks during the peak of the wet season. We calculated rainfall, throughfall and stemflow concentrations and fluxes of , , , , , , , and and stemflow volume-weighted mean concentrations and fluxes for three size classes of broadleaf trees and three size classes of palms. The concentrations of most solutes were higher in stemflow than in rainfall and increased with increasing tree and palm size. Concentration enrichments from rainfall to stemflow and throughfall were particularly high (81-fold) for . Stemflow fluxes of and exceeded throughfall fluxes but stemflow fluxes of other solutes were less than throughfall fluxes. Stemflow solute fluxes to the forest soil were dominated by fluxes on babassu palms, which represented only 4% of total stem number and 10% of total basal area. For , stemflow contributed 51% of the total mass of nitrogen delivered to the forest floor (stemflow+throughfall) and represented more than a 2000-fold increase in flux compared what would have been delivered by rainfall alone on the equivalent area. Because these highly localized fluxes of both water and persist in time and space, they have the potential to affect patterns of soil moisture, microbial populations and other features of soil biogeochemistry conducive to the creation of hotspots for nitrogen leaching and denitrification, which could amount to an important fraction of total ecosystem fluxes. Because these hotspots occur over very small areas, they have likely gone undetected in previous studies and need to be considered as an important feature of the biogeochemistry of palm-rich tropical forest. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2012
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