Distribution of phosphorus fractions of different plant availability in German forest soils and their relationship to common soil properties and foliar P concentrations

Abstract

Abstract. Repeated, grid-based forest soil inventories such as the nationwide German forest soil survey (GFSI) aim, among other things, at detecting changes in soil properties and plant nutrition. In these types of inventories, the only information on soil phosphorus (P) is commonly the total P content. However, total P content in mineral soils of forests is usually not a meaningful variable to predict the availability of P to trees. Here we tested a modified sequential P extraction ac-cording to Hedley to determine the distribution of different plant available P fractions in soil samples (0–5 and 10–30 cm depth) from 146 GFSI sites, capturing a wide variety of soil conditions. In addition, we analyzed relationships between these P fractions and common soil proper-ties such as pH, texture, and organic Carbon content (SOC). Total P content among our samples ranged from approximately 60 up to 2800 mg kg−1. The labile, moderately labile, and stable P fractions contributed to 27 %, 51 % and 22 % of total P content, respectively, at 0–5 cm depth. At 10–30 cm depth, the labile P fractions decreased to 15 %, whereas the stable P fractions in-creased to 30 %. These changes with depth were accompanied by a decrease in the organic P fractions. High P contents were related with high pH-values. Whereas the labile P pool increased with decreasing pH in absolute and relative terms, the stable P pool decreased in absolute and relative terms. Increasing SOC in soils led to significant increases in all P pools and in total P. In sandy soils, the P content across all fractions was lower than in other soil texture types. Multiple linear regressions indicated that P pools and P fractions were moderately well related to soil properties (r2 mostly above 0.5), and sand content of soils had the strongest influence. Foliage P concentrations in Pinus sylvestris were reasonably well explained by the labile and moderately labile P pool (r