5 ms·
If you read the original study there's a bit more going on than how the article portrays it. In particular, this site was host to invasive grasses, and after th
by jonchang 9y ago
If you read the original study there's a bit more going on than how the article portrays it. In particular, this site was host to invasive grasses, and after the orange peel input the site was flourishing with native species. Simply introducing nutrients into a system isn't guaranteed to get rid of the invasive species, and in fact it might make the problem even worse, so the fact that this happened is quite interesting and there's probably some interaction between the soil properties, decomposers, and orange peels that made this particularly good outcome possible. See also my top-level comment for my original take on it.
- micheljones 9y agoAcidity of the peels affected the acidity of the soil.
- jonchang 9y agoThis is what the authors hypothesized in the paper. They don't test it though so the causal link between orange peel acidity and forest restoration has not been established.
- micheljones 9y agoI'm not trying to state that as a fact. Just that the acidity was affected. Which could have affected the restoration in different ways, most likely by effects of plant affinity for soil acidity. But I think that the main factor is simply the increase in biological matter.