Content of exchangeable cations in albic luvisolsin the Republic of Macedonia

On different locations of the country, 23 soil profiles of Albic Luvisols were excavated and morphologically described on the field. More than half of soil profiles (15) were under forest vegetation, 4 soil profiles were under grass and the other 4 on arable land. The survey showed that the cation exchange capacity (CEC) is higher in the humus accumulative horizon A, but lower in the eluvial horizon. Due to increasing amount of clay in a lower part of a soil profiles, a CEC increases in hor. Bt, BtC and C. The base saturation percentage ranges from 46.93 % to 60.83 %. From these data we can see that the soils are in advanced stage of acidification. In Albic Luvisols, the basic cations (Ca⁺⁺, Mg⁺⁺,K⁺, Na⁺) are more common in comparison to acid cations (H⁺⁺ Al⁺⁺⁺). Exception is the eluvial horizon, where the content of acid cations higher compared to basic cations. Among the exchangeable basic cations, we can see that the content of Ca⁺⁺ cation has the highest values, Mg⁺⁺ is less represented, while K⁺ and Na⁺ cations have the lowest contents among the exchangeable cations. (author)