Table 1.
Physiographic and geographical characteristics of the sampling sites.
Fig 1.
Maps of natural forest and teak planted areas of Southern Western Ghats.
DEM based on Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 1 Arc-Second Global courtesy of the U.S. Geological Survey (https://doi.org/10.5066/F7PR7TFT) (https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov).
Table 2.
Comparative assessment of textural and chemical properties soil properties of natural forest and teak planted systems in different agro-ecological units.
Table 3.
Selected Horizon wise textural and chemical properties of natural forest and teak planted systems.
Table 4.
Soil Carbon (SOC) stocks and SOC (t C ha ⁻ ¹) by site and forest type.
Fig 2.
Variation in SOC distribution across soil profiles of plantation and natural forests at (a) NCL, (b) SCF, (c) SHH, (d) WCP, and (e) NHH sites.
Significant differences between forest types are indicated by different uppercase letters (P < 0.05), while differences across soil layers are marked by distinct lowercase letters (P < 0.05).
Fig 3.
Pearson correlation heatmap showing relationships between soil properties in Teak plantations.
Fig 4.
Pearson correlation heatmap showing relationships between soil properties in natural forests.
Fig 5.
Pairwise plots showing relationships among soil organic carbon (SOC), clay, silt, and sand across five Kerala forest sites.
Fig 6.
Pairwise plots showing relationships among soil organic carbon (SOC), clay, silt, and sand across five Kerala Teak plantation sites.