Soil in The Tropics
Tropical forests (rainforests) receive more insolation and rainfall over longer growing seasons than any other environment on earth. With these elevated temperatures, insolation and rainfall, biomass is extremely productive leading to carbon production as much as 800gCm2-yr-. Higher temperatures and larger amounts of water contribute to higher rates of chemical weathering. Increased rates of decomposition cause smaller amounts of fulvic acid to percolate and leach metals from the zone of active weathering. Thus, in stark contrast to soil in forests, tropical forests have little to no podzolization and therefore do not have marked visual and chemical contrasts with the soil layers. Instead, the mobile metals Mg, Fe and Al are precipitated as oxide minerals giving the soil a rusty red color.
Read more about this topic: Pedosphere
Famous quotes containing the words soil and/or tropics:
“But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it, if not before.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The white man in the tropics degenerates every day.”
—Christina Stead (1902–1983)