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How does heavy rainfall cause nutrients to leach from tropical rainforest soils?
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Tropical rainforest
Rainforest vegetation grows along the northern coast of Ecuador.
In tropical rainforests, heavy rainfall contributes to nutrient depletion through a process known as leaching. Because precipitation in these regions consistently exceeds evapotranspiration, there is a nearly permanent surplus of water within the soil.
This excess water moves downward through the soil profile toward streams and rivers in valley floors. As the water percolates through the ground, it carries dissolved mineral nutrients away from the upper layers of the soil, leaving the remaining earth relatively infertile. Consequently, most plant roots are concentrated in the uppermost soil layers, where they can quickly capture nutrients released by the decomposition of organic litter before those nutrients are washed away.1