Abstract
WHEN a soil is flooded or kept waterlogged, iron reduction and gleying begin within a few weeks. So far only organic ligands from various litters have been found to be capable of reducing and bleaching ferric compounds in soil during gleying1,2, but the involvement of certain unknown iron reducing bacteria seems to be more likely, for iron reduction has been found to stop in a submerged soil when bacterial inhibitors are added3. Aerobic as well as anaerobic bacteria, capable of reducing ferric oxide, have been abundant in the soils studied, whether gleying was detectable or not4,5. As far as gleying is concerned, the most important iron reducing bacteria are likely to be the anaerobic, nitrogen-fixing clostridia, with properties that would suit them to the poor and anaerobic conditions of gleyed subsoils. If these nitrogen fixers are implicated in gleying, they should be able to reproduce the characteristic features of gleying, even in laboratory conditions.
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References
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OTTOW, J. Bacterial Mechanism of Gley Formation in Artificially Submerged Soil. Nature 225, 103 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1038/225103a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/225103a0
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