Scholarly record

THE LIFE QUALITY OF THE BIODIVERSITY IN A FOREST SOIL AFFECTED BY ANTHROPIC POLLUTION

Daniela Răducu

Abstract

The paper objective was to emphasize the quality of the biodiversity life in an anthropic polluted soil and to underline the influence of the biological activity on the evolution and self-remediation of this soil. The studied site is located in the Apuseni Mountains, in the Ampoi Valley, on a slope ? 25%, facing north, under pine plantation. In the area, the prevailing soils are Cambisols and Luvisols formed into the coarse slope deposits dominated by sandstones. The site pollution was due to the atmospheric emissions of dioxide and trioxide sulphur brought by winds and/or acid rains from the nearby industrial activity. The results of the analytical data showed the extremely acidity and the high debazification of the soil profile. The heavy metals loading of the top soil horizon is very high, being 9 times for Pb, 3 times for Cu, and 2 times for Zn, comparing to the underlined horizon; while the lead values exceeded 3 times the alert threshold for the land use (agriculture and/or forest), being however below the alert threshold. The micromorphological observation (on the oriented thin sections) showed an intense weathered process of the skeleton grains, with a maximum in the bottom profile, where the pH, BSD and CEC reached the highest values. As a result, the soil is more clayey, thus plasma is very abundant both in matrix and pore (as textural pedofeatures: coatings, pore infillings, and plasma with illuvial morphology). In this respect, on the general background of a yellowish-brown soil matrix, reddish clayey+Fe pedofeatures had been formed being chromatically and compositionally similar to the secondary weathering products from the edges of the mineral grains. Consequently, the reddish colour of the soil is ?borrowed? and not ?inherited from the parent material?, as it seems at macroscopic level. The micromorphological observation also showed an important biological activity into the soil profile, from macro- to microorganisms, despite the hard acidic environment. The edges of the strongly weathered skeleton grains are imprinted with the ectomycorrhizal mycelium network, showing the strongly biochemical weathering. The continuous release of the secondary products from the mineral grains structures maintain this soil young, and do not allowed to be expressed, at morphological level, its chemical characteristics showed by the analytical data (extremely acidity and very low cation content). In this respect, the biological activity influenced the evolution and the self-remediation of this soil and improved the soil life quality.

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DOI resolver: doi.org/10.5593/sgem2019v/1.4/s03.055

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