Physical, chemical and pedogenetical properties of soils in relation with altitude at Kazdagi upland black pine forest.

ABSTRACT

In this study an attempt was made to investigate the physical, chemical and pedogenetical soil properties of black pine forests at over 1400 metre (m) altitude of Kazdagi mountainous uplands. Soil profiles (37 numbers) were dug, examined and sampled considering the horizons and soil volume weight, fine soil weight, stoniness, pH, total nitrogen, soil organic carbon and pedogenesis alterations were tried to be explored in relation with elevating altitude. While the altitude increased, soil organic carbon and total nitrogen values decreased at A horizon, and pH decreased at Bw horizons. Soil volume weight, fine soil weight, stoniness values of A horizon has positively and strong correlation with elevation with the coefficient values 0.699, 0.518 and 0.573 respectively at 0.01 significance. The highest regression values between altitude and volume weight, soil organic carbon contents (%) and soil total nitrogen contents (%) were detected with R2 coefficients 0.489, 0.295 and 0.247 for A and 0.556, 0.311 and 0.286 for Bw horizons respectively. The achieved results reveal that the elevation effect is remarkable in particular for the uppermost soil horizons. Furthermore the soil generation in fact functions well up to 1550 m altitude at Kazdagi mountainous land where we determined that at upper elevations Inceptisols replace with Alfisols in comparison with each other.