Soil perturbation processes reflected by changes in high molecular weight lipids in continental Medlterranean ecosystems from central Spain

Abstract

The soil lipid represents a heterogeneous molecular pool recording valuable information about the structure of the trophic system and the environmental changes with a bearing on the performance of the soil biogeochemical cycle. In spite of the extensive literature that have been published on the composition of this soil fraction, most of the available data concerns the volatile compounds that can be analysed by standard, long-column (15-30 m) gas-chromatography/mass spectrometry. However, recent studies have shown that such an analytical approach only show a limited amount of the total molecules that are extracted by using organic solvents.