Nitrogen Dynamics during Conversion of Primary Amazonian Rain Forest to Slash and Burn Agriculture
- 1 January 1983
- Vol. 40 (1) , 131-139
- https://doi.org/10.2307/3544208
Abstract
The standing stocks and fluxes of N were measured for 4 yr in an experimental slash and burn agricultural site and control forest in the Amazon Basin of Venezuela. There was a decrease of about 15% in N in the system as a whole due to leaching, harvesting and denitrification. However, N levels in the soil did not change, due to replenishment by N entering the soil from decomposing slash. Since N levels in the soil remained high, scarcity of N is probably not responsible for the observed decline in crop yields, and lack of N is not expected to affect secondary succession in the abandoned agricultural plot.This publication has 10 references indexed in Scilit:
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