ABSTRACT
The cycling of nutrients is integal to any vegetation community’s ecology, but the proportions taken up, amounts stored in plants, rates of cycling, and so on vary widely. Differences between virgin and colonising successions are com monly taken, together with related changes in biomass, as yardsticks by which to assess the impact of human interference. The virgin vegetation covering the greater part of the potentially cultivable land of the Wola region is montane forest, and the cycling of minerals within it indicates fertility status before humans interfere with the vegetation. While mineral cycling under mature forest rarely features in the recuperation of cultivated sites, as it may in some agricultural systems, because few areas under cultivation are left abandoned sufficiently long for such forest to re-establish itself on sites, nev ertheless it serves as a base line from which we can assess changes conse quent upon cultivation. It is a starting point against which we can appraise the impact of cultivation on fertility and productivity, under the different regrowth successions that result, notably secondary woodland and grassland (both short coarse and tall cane grasses). A change in vegetational communi ties consequent upon human activity need not spell massive nutrient losses, degradation of land resources and diminished agricultural potential, although it may in the short run considerably reduce biomass and species diversity.
