Changes in soil organic carbon and nutrient stocks in conventional selective logging versus reduced-impact logging in rainforests on highly weathered soils in Southern Cameroon

Although disturbances associated with selective logging can cause pronounced changes in soil characteristics and nutrient stocks, such information is very limited for highly weathered soils in Africa. We assessed the effects of reduced impact logging (RIL, with a 30-year rotation management plan) and conventional logging (CL, without a management plan) on physical and biochemical characteristics of Ferralsol soils that developed on pre-Cambrian rocks in rainforests of Cameroon. Five to seven months after the logging operations were completed, we mapped the CL and RIL sites and quantified the disturbed areas: felling gaps, skidding trails, logging decks and roads. We selected four replicate plots at each site that encompassed these four disturbed strata and an adjacent undisturbed area as the reference. At each disturbed stratum and reference area per plot, we took soil samples down to 50 cm, and quantified soil physical and biochemical characteristics. Nutrient exports with timber harvest were also quantified. The logging intensity was very low with removals of 0.2 and 0.3 tree per hectare, and the ground area disturbed accounted only 5.2% and 4.0% of the total area in CL and RIL, respectively. In terms of area disturbance for each harvested tree, CL had 753 m 2 tree −1 more affected ground area than RIL. Roads and logging decks were the most affected by logging operations, where effective cation exchange capacity, soil organic carbon (SOC), total nitrogen (N), Bray-extractable phosphorus (P) and exchangeable aluminum decreased whereas pH, 15 N natural abundance and exchangeable manganese increased compared to the undisturbed reference area (P < 0.01-0.04). The disturbed area showed overall reductions of 21-29% in SOC, N and P stocks relative to the reference areas (P = 0.02-0.07). The amounts of C, N, P and base cations exported with harvested timber were only 0.4-5.9% of the changes in stocks of these elements in the disturbed strata. Nutrient reductions in the soil and exports through timber harvest were comparable between CL and RIL, after one logging event in this very low intensity logging systems. Our results suggest that unplanned operations together with frequent re-logging inherent to CL can increase area damage and enhance changes in SOC and nutrients as opposed to RIL, which may affect the recovery of the succeeding vegetation.