Soil communities are important aspects of biodiversity and they are involved in many important ecosystem processes, particularly nutrient cycling. Soil chemistry is neither an aspect of biodiversity nor one of the primary causes of change addressed by this project. Nevertheless, understanding mechanisms of change and correctly attributing effects to causes are central to the project, making it necessary to understand the soil chemistry at sites. For example, a change in the proportion of acidophilic species in a plant community may be attributed to changing pH of rainfall. However it is possible that.
