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In order to clarify thecharacteristics and stocks of soil nutrient under various land use types in a super wet tropical rain forest in Padang,West Sumatera, an investigation of the nutrient characteristics of the several samples of soils under different land usesuch as cacao plantation (CP), cinnamon plantation (CMP), mixed garden (MG), and primary forest (PF) in GadutMountain, Padang, West Sumatra was conducted. The soil nutrient characteristics varied among the different landuse types. The range of nutrient characteristics under four land use type were 4.60 – 7.01% and 0.4 – 0.60% for totalcarbon and total nitrogen and were 9.80 – 24.59, 0.68 – 2.07 and 0.30 – 0.8 cmol (+) kg-1 for Ca, Mg and K, respectively.The highest content of soil nutrient status was found under MG, while the lowest soil nutrient status found at PF. Thisresult indicated that the MG with various vegetation types might contribute in enriching the organic matter in soil. Thesoil nutrient content such as TN, exchangeable Ca, Mg and K tended to decrease with soil depth of each land usetype. However, the sodium (Na) content in soil tended to increase within the soil depth. These were presumably dueto evaporation of Na at surface soil within the study area was low. These study results showed that spatially thenutrient properties of soil were closely related to the land use type and management practices. It was suggested thatthe nutrient characteristics of soils under various land use types in a super wet tropical rain forest region, in GadutMountain, Padang West Sumatra were significantly affected by the land use types and land coverage
