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.
Her PhD supervisor Dr Bonnie Waring, now at the Department of Life Sciences 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."To study the soils, Murray climbed trees in six primary rainforest sites in Costa Rica.
These forests-in-miniature contain abundant plant and animal life, with invertebrates also supporting varied bird species. The plants include epiphytes -- plants that live on other plants -- which are especially common in cloud forests.Canopy soils are nutrient-rich, thanks to mosses that convert nitrogen from the air, meaning the epiphytes that live there are healthier than other types that live directly on tree bark .
Many such forests have also been logged or face future deforestation, and even where forests have been allowed to recover , few if any would have had sufficient time to regrow mature canopy soils.
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