Soils forming on the branches of trees are an overlooked forest habitat

by Hayley Dunning
16 August 2023



A woman sitting on a thick tree branch, investigating soil and plants
Jessica Murray in a tree. Credit: Marco Molina


A study on ‘canopy soils’ on old trees in Costa Rica shows they are important habitats and carbon stores that cannot easily be replaced.

In certain trees, soils can form along branches and can support varied plant and animal life. However, what conditions these ‘canopy soils’ form in, and what kind of biodiversity they support, has been difficult to study.

Now, researchers from Utah State University and Imperial College London have surveyed dozens of trees in Costa Rica, mapping the canopy soils to determine where they form and how they might be affected by a changing climate. The results are published in Geoderma.

First author Jessica Murray, from Utah State University, said: “We found canopy soils most often form in cool, foggy areas in these tropical forests where there are large, old trees. Unfortunately, this describes some of the most at-risk forest types, which are threatened by changing climate and deforestation.”

Her PhD supervisor Dr Bonnie Waring, now at the Department of Life Sciences (Silwood Park) at Imperial, added: “Canopy soils in tropical cloud forests are rich in life and nutrients and could be large carbon stores. The fact it’s taken until now to even start to recognise their importance is amazing – not least because we may be destroying them faster than we can study them.”

More:
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/246936/soils-forming-branches-trees-overlooked-forest/