Some aspects of site conditions of heathlands in the Toruń Basin

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to characterize some aspects of site conditions in selected places with the occurrence of heather (Calluna vulgaris) within the certain area of the Toruń Basin affected by military activities. Relations of heathlands to the soil cover appear to focus on the position of heather in the ecological succession on presently developing, young sandy soils and regularities of the heather distribution in a mosaic with grasslands in isolated dune fields. Studies were performed at two sites: Stawki and Chorągiewka.

Heathlands of this area are connected with nutrient-poor and dry sandy habitats. In the ecological succession, which proceeds in places previously devoid of the vegetation cover and strongly deflated, they occur as a transitional type of vegetation, displacing plants of initial psammophilous community (Spergulo-Corynephoretum) and later giving place to pine forest. In the soil evolution, they are connected with the intermediate stage represented by arenosols (haplic arenosols) - weakly developed but sufficiently acid soils. On deforested, parallel dunes of the Toruń Valley, there are specific regular mosaics of vegetation and soil. Heather occurs on podzolized soils (albic arenosols, haplic podzols) on north-western slopes. Dry grasslands (Calamagrostis epigejos) cover slopes with south-eastern exposition, with soils eroded down to bed-rock and now regenerating to the stage of arenosols (haplic arenosols). Podzolized soils seem not to be developed under heather but rather under the relics of former pine forests preserved from erosion and deflation on less steep and more moist slopes.