Highland forests in mountains of Northeast Brazil are islands of humid Atlantic forest in the midst of the semi-arid region. The climatic conditions are rather atypical, improved by the occurrence of orographic rainfall, which can reach 1,200 mm per year. In the state of Pernambuco, most of the scientific studies in these humid highland forests are focused on botanical and zoological aspects only, with very little information about soils. Aiming to study the soils of the humid mountains in the semi-arid […]

The majority (60 %) of the soils in the Venezuelan Andes are Inceptisols, a large percentage of which are classified as Dystrustepts by the US Soil Taxonomy, Second Edition of 1999. Some of these soils were classified as Humitropepts (high organic – C-OC-soils) and Dystropepts by the Soil Taxonomy prior to 1999, but no equivalent large group was created for high-OC soils in the new Ustepts suborder. Dystrusepts developed on different materials, relief and vegetation. Their properties are closely related […]

Despite relatively high levels of total P, most deeply-weathered tropical soils have very low levels of available P due to the low solubility of most P forms found in these soils. In this research we studied P adsorption of soils, some of which were rich in apatite, developed from basic to ultrabasic volcanic rocks in the Upper Paranaíba region of Minas Gerais State, in relation to the specific surface and clay mineralogy. Samples of eleven B horizons from representative Latosols […]