Abstract
Samples of two soils and two sediments collected at sites originating from mangrove forests in Thailand, were examined in terms of buffering capacity to organic compounds. Atrazine and linuron were used as representative hydrophobic organic compounds for estimating the buffering capacity by observing their adsorptive and desorptive behavior. The buffering capacity could be represented by the distribution of the adsorption ratio (AR) and desorption ratio (DR) as follows: AR (%) = (amount of herbicide adsorbed per unit weight of soil)/(initial amount of herbicide) x 100, and DR (%) = (amount of herbicide desorbed per unit weight of soil after herbicide desorption experiments) / (initial amount of adsorbed herbicide on soil) x 100. The soil under mangrove forests displayed a larger buffering capacity to atrazine and linuron. Compared with 42 soils from Japan, in terms of the adsorption proparty of atrazine and linuron, the mangrove soil ranked in a higher category on the classification of the Japanese soils. Thus, the importance of maintaining or recovering the mangrove forests to promote environmental conservation was emphasized.