Abstract

The temperate forests of south-central Chile belong to the association Lapageria aextoxiconetum Oberdorfer vegetation, dominated by Aextoxicon punctatum R. et P., elderly and multi-layered, where the strata are emergent, dominant and co-dominant, shrub and herbaceous epiphytes. This work is the first report of measurements of some biochemical properties in samples from vascular epiphytes substrate in temperate forests. We evaluated the most frequent ecological situations: bifurcated trees (BT), dead standing trees (SDT) and medium gap border trees (MGBT), ES were compared with the surrounding soil forest land (SS) as control. The microbial biomass and enzyme activities of substrate were higher in ES of BT, situation probably due to optimal micro-environmental conditions (moisture and humidity, temperature, organic matter (OM) content and nutrient availability); similarly, lower levels of activity were found in ES in MGBT situation. We found a statistically significant correlation (P≤0.05) between evaluated microbial biomass and enzymatic activities. Furthermore, the biochemical properties were influenced by factors such as moisture, temperature, pH and OM content and all of these factors correlated significantly (P≤0.01) among them. These results demonstrate a difference between ES and SS in BT that should be explored to gain insights in understanding the processes of decomposition using the natural microcosms that ES provides.