The soils associated to depressed summits on the Coastal Plains are still little studied in Brazil and are differentiated in several aspects. Generally, the closer a soil is to these depressions, the sandier is the texture and the more accentuated the hydromorphism, where the occurrence of Spodosols is common. The objective of this work was to perform different extractions of Fe, Al, Si and organic C to understand the podzolization process in soils of the summit depressions of the Coastal Plains of Northeastern Brazil. For this purpose, soil profiles were described and samples collected in four areas: Coruripe, AL; Neópolis, SE; Acajutiba, BA; and Nova Viçosa, BA. In these samples, the Fe, Al and Si contents were determined by the sodium dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate, ammonium oxalate and sodium pyrophosphate extractors and soil organic matter was chemically fractionated. The increase in organic C, and Fe and Al contents by different extractors from the iluvial (accumulation) horizons of each soil, relatively to the eluvial (loss) horizons, reflects the field morphology and reinforces the importance of the podzolization process in the studied soils. Complexes of Al-humus entirely dominate the matrix of the iluvial horizons associated to hydromorphism, while there is a variable influence of different Fe forms on those with no hydromorphism. The Ferrihumiluvic Spodosol profile is the only one of the four studied profiles with spodic horizons with "s" subscript, i.e., where the contents of extracted Fe affected the morphology differentially.
translocation; soil landscape position; sandy-quartz soils; organic carbon
