availableandreservenutrientcharacterizationofthe.doc

Semi-detailed soil survey of Barro Colorado Island, Panama I. Baillie*, H. Elsenbeer, F. Barthold2, R. Grimm2, R. Stallard  CONTENTS Summary i Acknowledgements iii Abbreviations and acronyms iv 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Barro Colorado Island 1 1.2 Soil-related ecological research on BCI 1 1.3 Aims of BCI soil survey 2 2 BCI survey area 3 2.1 Location and access 3 2.2 Climate 3 2.3 Geology and soil parent materials 3 2.4 Topography 7 2.5 Drainage and hydrology 8 2.6 Land surface age 8 2.7 Biota 9 3 Previous soil data for BCI 9 3.1 Previous soil surveys 9 3.2 Other pedospatial data 10 4 Soil survey methods 11 4.1 Field 11 4.2 Soil mapping 15 4.3 Laboratory analyses 15 5 Soils of BCI 16 5.1 BCI soil forms and pedogenetic trends 16 5.2 Classification of BCI soils 17 5.3 Characteristics of BCI soil classes 19 5.4 Correlations of BCI soils 36 6 Soil mapping 41 6.1 BCI soil mapping units 41 6.2 Updating and using the BCI soil map 41 7 Soils of specific research areas 43 7.1 Soils of 50 ha CTFS Long Term Ecological Research plot and upper catchment of Conrad Creek 43 7.2 Soils of Lutz Creek catchment 44 8 Highlights of BCI soils 45 8.1 Pedological comparisons 45 8.2 Ecological implications 46 References and general BCI soils bibliography 49 SUMMARY This is the report of a semi-detailed soil survey in 2005-6 of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute’s 1560 ha research reserve of Barro Colorado Island in the man-made Gatun Lake, Republic of Panama. This was a conventional free survey, in which the field observations were subjectively sited following landscape prompts. There were almost 500 soil survey sites plus an additional 250 sites where members of the soil survey team identified soil classes during when working on other projects. The density of observations qualifies the survey as 2nd order by USDA, and de