Comparison of soil and forest floor properties of floodplain and surrounding forests in Igneada, Turkey.

ABSTRACT

In this study some soil and forest floor characteristics of floodplain forest, thermophile forest and sand dune were investigated at Igneada, Turkey. In this context, surface soil samples were analyzed and compared to each other in the extension of soil physical, chemical properties and as plant nutrition environment. To investigate the soil characteristics soil samples were collected from 48 sampling point. The distribution of the soils revealed that remarkably physical soil properties figure the ordination of soils in principal component analysis (PCA). We concluded that floodplain forests have quite different soil properties from the thermophile forest and sand dunes under the continuous effect of surrounding thermophile forest land with less sandy proportion to soil texture 52.4 at floodplain forest, 64.0% at thermophile forest and 91.0% at sand dunes and highly organic carbon 5.619, 4.191 and 0.478% respectively at 0-5 cm depth and total nitrogen content 0.213, 0.078 and 0.056% for floodplain forest> thermophile forest> sand dune soils, respectively. Weight and organic matter contents of forest floor were significantly higher in the thermophile forests.