Effects of the conversion of natural tropical rainforest to monoculture rubber plantations on soil hydrological processes

作者：Qiaoyan Chen, Ruiyu Fu, Siyuan Cheng, Dong Qiao, Zhongmin Hu, Zijia Zhang, Licong Dai · 发表于：Journal of Plant Ecology · 年份：2024 · DOI：10.1093/jpe/rtae021 · 被引用次数：20 · 研究领域：Oil Palm Production and Sustainability、Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management

Abstract Rubber plantations have increased significantly under unprecedented economic growth in tropical areas, which leads to soil degradation and thereby alters soil hydrological processes. However, our understanding of how forest conversion affects soil hydrological processes remains unclear. Here, we collected soil samples from secondary forests (SF) and rubber plantations (RP) to determine the soil hydrological characteristics. We found the topsoil (0–20 cm) water retention in SF was higher than that of RP but displayed the contrast pattern in a deeper soil layer (20–60 cm). Meanwhile, the soil infiltration rates among the two vegetation types decreased significantly with infiltration time, with higher stable soil infiltration rates in SF than those in RP. Moreover, soil properties were also impacted by the forest conversion, such as the topsoil capillary porosity (CP) and total porosity (TP) in SF were higher than those of RP but contrasted in a deep soil layer. In comparison, the topsoil bulk density (BD) in SF was lower than that of RP, but contrasted in the deep soil layer and reached a significant level in the 0–10 and 40–50 cm (P < 0.05). Overall, the soil water retention was mainly determined by the CP, which could explain 31.56% of the total variance in soil water retention, followed by TP (26.57%) and soil BD (26.47%), whereas soil texture exerts a weak effect on soil water retention. Therefore, we can conclude that the conversion of tropical rainforest i...