『Abstract
Ogasawara Islands are important ecosystems sustaining many indigenous
spices. To clarify the indigenous soil environments of Ogasawara
Islands, we studied the chemistry of the soils. Many surface soils
were low in bio-available P (0 to 0.55 g P2O5 kg-1, average: 0.04 g P2O5 kg-1 as Bray II P, n=22), but several
soils were found to contain extremely large amounts of bio-available
P (1.36 to 6.98 g P2O5
kg-1, average: 2.93 g P2O5 kg-1. n=5). From soil profile analyses,
the authors concluded that the extremely large amount of bio-available
P could not be explained by the effects of parent materials with
high P contents nor the effect of fertilizations by human activity,
but the effects of natural seabird activities in the past could
be the cause. The soil profiles with large amounts of bio-available
P indicate deep migration of soil materials from A horizons, which
could be a result of intensive mixing of upper horizons by seabird
activities. The intensive mixing was supported by the low mechanical
impedance of the horizons for the P-accumulating soils (8.17±2.54
kg cm-2, n=8) than those for the non-P-accumulating
soils (17.46±3.52 kg cm-2, n=36). It is likely that
in the past seabirds, such as shearwaters, made burrows in the
soils for nesting and propagating and inadvertently transported
a large amount of P from the sea to the soils, resulting in the
extremely large amounts of bio-available P in the present soils.
Keywords: Bray II P; Chichi-jima Islands; Haha-jima Islands; P
accumulation; Seabird feces; Soil mechanical impedance』
1. Introduction
2. Materials and methods
2.1. Soil samples
2.2. Soil chemical properties
2.3. Geographical information
3. Results
4. Discussion and conclusions
References