The geochemical and mineralogical evolution was studied in three different alteration profiles of ultramafic (serpentine) rocks near Alpinópolis and Fortaleza de Minas, in southwestern Minas Gerais State (Brazil). Soil moisture and temperature regimes are udic and thermic, respectively. The current chemical and mineralogical evolution degree is moderate compared to other basic and ultramafic material of the same area and is characterized by significant losses of Na and Mg and, to a lesser extent, of Ca and Si. Very little K was found in the parent material and in the alteration zones, whereas the surface horizons are enriched by external addition. Aluminum (locally also Fe) are the least mobile elements of the system. The primary easily weatherable minerals, such as talc, tremolite and also trioctahedral chlorite, are abundant in the clay fraction and are all thermodynamically unstable in these tropical soils of rare mineralogical composition. The ongoing geochemical process can be defined as bisialitization that can coincide with ferruginization, with the formation of trioctahedric secondary minerals by direct transformation of the structure and also by neoformation, all coexisting with the residual primary minerals. However the most weathered phases observed in well-drained positions, tended to monosialitization with kaolinite formation of variable crystallinity degree. The mineralogical assembly evidences the metastability and incipient nature of the pedogenetic system.
tropical soils; little weathered soils; ultramafic rocks; serpentine; talc; chlorite; interstratified minerals
