• Journal of Korean Society of Forest Science
• /
• v.90 no.1
• /
• pp.64-73
• /
• 2001

Generally potassium in the soil can be remained as water soluble, exchangeable, and available types, respectively. Theses types of potassiums are also known to keep their kinetic relationships to each other. The Purpose on this research was to investigate types and relationships of potassium in the soil, and the characteristics of potassium supply in different forest soils. The results could be summarized as follows; 1. The amounts of available potassium in A and B horizon soils by continuous leaching with 0.01N-HCl were as follows : for A Horizon soils, pohang(Gray brown forest soils), Changsung (Brown forest soils), and Youngwol(Dark red forest soils) were ranged from 0.2me/l00g to 0.8me/100g, Taean(Red and Yellow forest soils) was 0.1-0.6me/100g, Kapyung(Brown forest soils) was 0.2-0.4me/100g. For the B layer, Youngwol was 0.1-0.5me/100g, Pohang, Taean, Kapyung were 0.1-0.4me/100g, Changsung was 0.1-0.3me/100g, respectivly. 2. Of ten times-pulse leaching with 0.01N-HCl for A layer soil, more 80% of total available potassium leaching were recovered by the second pulse as leachate for Pohang, Changsung, Youngwol, while similar amounts of potassium in the leachate were obtained with the third pulse leaching for Kapyung, Taean, respectively, On the other hand, the 80 % release of available potassium from the B layer soil was obtained by the second pulse leaching for all areas investigated. 3. For the relationships between soluble potassium and exchangeable potassium, the exchangeable potassium was increased while the soluble potassium was not changed significantly in B layer. And both soluble potassium and exchangeable potassium in A layer were similar. For the relationship between exchangeable potassium and available potassium in both A and B layers, the amounts of available potassium increased by 1.2 to 1.5 times as the exchangeable potassium increased. 4. For distribution of all types of potassium throughout locations investigated, the types of potassium were in the decreasing orders of available, exchangeable, and soluble. 5. The simplified method for an analysis of all types of potassium by sequential leaching with 0.01N-HCl should be developed not only with respect to time-saving and efficiency but also verification of the relationship between available potassium and tree growth.