Examples of our services:

Conservation management of species-rich meadows

Soil monitoring

Restoring species-rich grasslands

Heathland restoration

Soil assessment

Restoration of wet grasslands

Monitoring acid grassland

Research on hedgerows

Environmental mitigation

Sustainable weed control

Research on rare soils

Sulpho-rendzinas (soils on gypsum rocks) are formed under the effect of the following factors:

• cold humid climate,

• plant communities of taiga,

• parent rocks of 'pure' gypsum,

by the following processes:

• accumulation of acidic litter and raw humus on the surface,

• accumulation of hyphae/root-derived organic matter within the profile,

• cryogenic disintegration of gypsum,

• chemical dissolution of gypsum,

• calcium sulphate leaching,

• calcium sulphate crystallization in form of gypsum coatings (pendants),

• migration of humus and iron oxides and their immobilization within the gypsum coatings.  

Such soils have principal differences from temperate soils on gypsum rocks of 'impure' composition (with calcareous and/or silicate admixtures) as well as from all semi-arid and arid gypseous soils.

A Sulphorendzina-dominated soil cover supports unique open woodland communities untypical for the taiga zone. Such ecosystems have a patchy distribution among more productive woods.

The nutrient deficiency of the gypsum soils (lack of all nutrients apart from Ca and S) is partly off-set by the lateral income of organic matter (e.g., leaf fall) from the surrounding productive woods.

The Sulphorendzinas studied represent a unique model of soil genesis with the mineral phase represented only by soluble gypsum and with the absence of any long-living minerals.

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study sites - laboratory analyses - world occurrence