Soil fertility management and its contribution to the formation of amazonian dark earths in urban homegardens, Santarém, Para, Brazü

摘要

In order to understand how anthropogenic soils, Amazonian Dark Earths, may have been formed in the past, this study considered soil fertility management in 40 homegardens in the Amazonian city of Santarém, Para, Brazil. We compared the soil chemistryof a soil conditioner created by the slow burning of organic household debris known as Terra Queimada (TQ) with adjacent non-TQ soil. We found that the TQ had significantly higher CEC, higher pH and was in general much more fertile than the adjacent soil. Although preliminary and small-scale, this study supports the hypothesis that ADEs were likely formed through cool, slow burning, and that this process can likely be recreated to help improve low-fertility soils in the Amazon region.