What role does soil play in a rainforest ecosystem?
The soil is thin, low on minerals and not very nutritious in the rainforest due to the continual leaching of the rainwater. This makes the plants very dependent on soil dwelling bacteria and fungi to decay the fresh leaf litter and other detritus that must be decomposed to provide fresh nutrients for the plants to grow in the thin soil. The rain forest has rather acid soil due to the volume of water moving through the soil. Some bacteria do not tolerate acidic soil so there are more acidic tolerant varieties of bacteria compared to a region with neutral soil pH. Shallow soils offer little rooting depth. Trees have several adaptations for additional stability: buttress roots, longer root runs.
