Can anyone provide any information and/or good references on how rainfall affects soil pH in the short and long-term?
I'm conducting a microbiome experiment and noticed the soil pH increase slightly over three days of testing in an arid region of the world. There was a period of rainfall in the morning of the first day (prior to testing pH), and I was wondering if this could have influenced the pH in such a short time? Could the rapidity of the change be due to the rainfall in combination with climate and soil type (i.e. rain increases acidity, but speed of evaporation and uptake by plants immediately decreases the acidity)? Or could the rainfall directly cause the increase in alkalinity? Or do these daily fluctuations occur regardless of rainfall?
Thanks
@ Jake, rain leaches alkaline elements including calcium, magnesium and potassium from the soil into runoff water, leaving acidic elements like hydrogen, aluminum and manganese to replace the bases. Temperature and rainfall control leaching intensity and soil mineral weathering. In warm, humid environments, soil pH decreases over time in a process called soil acidification, due to leaching from high amounts of rainfall.
Soil pH does not change largely due to one or few rain incidences. Soil pH changes is a phenomenon which requires significant time and rainfall. In your case, it is obvious that rain dissolved/mobilized the ions in the soil and solution becomes slight alkaline.
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