Why don't trees deplete their soil's nutrients after hundreds of years?

Question

Say that a deciduous tree's leaves fall each year, and they are not allowed to decompose and reenter the soil. Why doesn't the tree deplete its soil of nutrients? Does the tree resorb nutrients from the leaves before they fall off? I would imagine that all that chlorophyll requires a whole lot of magnesium from the soil each year, so why doesn't the tree run out of it?

Answer 1

Technically, they do deplete the nutrients. However, there are other processes that replace them to a degree. Usually, leaves do decay and replace some of the materials, but certain organisms can break down minerals and render them soluable and therefore available for the trees. Fungi and lichens are actually sources of nutrients for other plants in this manner.

Another source is volcanic dust that can travel worldwide by air. Even a tiny amount of this can replace some lost nutrients. Other sources include underground water can can carry dissolved minerals, rainfall (which can carry tiny dust particles from distant places) and animals and plants that decay.

So yes, trees do deplete some nutrients, but there are alternate sources that are small but cumulative.

Answer 2

Consider soil as more of a liquid then a solid. Water seeps through and around bringing nutrients from the area around it. Worms, birds and other animals, as well as large amounts of bacteria work on the elements in the soil and die in it. Even rain can carry nutrients at different levels. The tree roots go many feet into the ground, sometimes hitting the water table, which brings all sorts of nutrients from the area around it. Twigs and leaves are always dropping around it and some of them are going to go into the soil, even if they are being raked up on a regular basis.

Answer 3

simply because nutrients are moving under soil which means that the nutrients in a particular soil area does not stays there forever but rather the nutrients move from one place to another

Answer 4

decomposition is a natural earth process. the trees absorb the nutrients from the decomposed leaves and other organic materials in the soil

Answer 5

i'm afraid that "premaculture" is ideal. Depeding on the country, a logging company could be required to plant wood. the main subject is that inspite of the incontrovertible fact that they do plant the wood(particularly no longer likely in lots of places because of the fact of loss of conservative source administration) they are planting timber as a thank you to be powerful to them faster or later in order that they could be waiting to come back lower back and decrease them down in one greater 40 years. yet another quandary is that traditionally in rainforests, the floor is depleted of supplementations and minerals as quickly as decrease for this reason of the two erosion of soil(they get alot of rain) or in the incontrovertible fact that greater than a number of the biomes supplementations and minerals are locked in the biomass. The biomass is the timber they decrease and sent foreign places. additionally, rainforest dynamics are particularly unique in distinctive techniques. basic wooded area develops in levels of succession and planting monoculture wood unbalances this basic order and for this reason the woodland, if left on my own(no longer likely), will take over one hundred years to attain its basic state. you're able to desire to do no longer forget approximately that the worldwide places the region greater rainforests lie are very poor or particularly undesirable and subsequently are greater in touch with feeding their families than replantation. So it may no longer ask your self me in any understand to seem a wooded area cleared and left to erode. inspite of the incontrovertible fact that cynical it sounds, that's the certainty.

Answer 6

ever growing root system searches out fresh nutrients