Characteristics of Phosphorus in Some Eastern Australian Acid Sulfate Soils

Forty-five acid sulfate topsoil samples (depth ＜ 0.5 m) from 15 soil cores were collected from 11 locations along the New South Wales coast, Australia. There was an overall trend for the concentration of the HC1extractable P to increase along with increasing amounts of organic C and the HCl-extractable trivalent metals in the topsoils of some less-disturbed acid sulfate soils (pH ＜4.5). This suggests that inorganic P in these soils probably accumulated via biological cycling and was retained by complexation with trivalent metals or their oxides and hydroxides. While there was no clear correlation between pH and the water-extractable P, the concentration of the water-extractable P tended to increase with increasing amounts of the HCl-extractable P. This disagrees with some established models which suggest that the concentration of solution P in acid soils is independent of total P and decreases with increasing acidity. The high concentration of sulfate present in acid sulfate soils appeared to affect the chemical behavior of P in these soil systems. Comparison was made between a less disturbed wetland acid sulfate soil and a more intensively disturbed sugarcane acid sulfate soil.The results show that reclamation of wetland acid sulfate soils for sugarcane production caused a significant decrease in the HCl-extractable P in the topsoil layer as a result of the reduced bio-cycling of phosphorus following sugarcane farming. Simulation experiment shows that addition of hydrated lime had no effects on the immobilization of retained P in an acid sulfate soil sample within a pH range 3.5～4.6. When the pH was raised to above 4.6, soluble P in the soil extracts had a tendency to increase with increasing pH until the 15th extraction (pH 5.13). This, in combination with the poor pH-soluble P relationship observed from the less-disturbed acid sulfate soils, suggests that soluble P was not clearly pH-dependent in acid sulfate soils with pH ＜ 4.5.