Soil parent material, texture and oxide contents have little effect on soil organic carbon retention in tropical highlands

In tropical humid conditions, soil organic carbon (SOC) concentrations have been reported to be proportional to clay, clay+silt and Fe/Al oxide contents. Typically, soil texture and mineralogy are strongly dependent on soil parent materials, but it is not known if SOC retention would also be affected by soil parent material. Such relationship, if established, could be useful to estimate regional SOC stocks, since geological maps are more numerous and often more accurate than soil maps. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of parent material, texture,and oxide content on SOC contents in tropical highlands. Thus, samples to 1-m depth were obetained for seven soils derived from quartzite, sericite-schist, itabirite, serpentinite, limestone, gneiss and phyllite. All soils formed under similar climate and native forest, and were located on the midslope position. Despite wide variations in soil texture and mineralogy, there were no valid correlations between SOC and clay, clay+silt or Fe/Al oxide concentrations. Similarly, SOC stocks did not differ significantly when computed for 0–20, 0–40 and 0–100cm layers, and in all soils most SOC was associated with the clay fraction. We propose that such absence of effects of soil parent material, texture and oxide contents on SOC retention can be due to the overriding effect of altitudes of 900–1100m a.s.l., which resulted in higher SOC stocks because of lower mean annual temperatures. These trends are in contrast to those reported for tropical lowlands where the textural and mineralogical controls of SOC retention were first described. Therefore, soils on tropical highlands (>900m) are likely to present similarly high SOC stocks, whereas soil parent material, by means of soil texture, mineralogy and oxide contents would affect SOC retention only at lower altitudes.