Soils: 4_Field Skills Flashcards
(25 cards)
What is a Horizon in soil?
Distinct layers within a soil profile that differ in physical, chemical, and biological properties.
What is an Organic Horizon?
Soil horizons containing 17% or more organic carbon, typically formed from accumulated organic matter.
What is a Mineral Horizon?
Soil horizons containing less than 17% organic carbon, primarily composed of mineral particles.
What is a Diagnostic Property?
A characteristic of a soil horizon used to identify and classify it within a soil classification system.
What are Master Horizons?
Major soil horizons designated by capital letters (O, A, B, C, R, W).
What are Suffixes in soil classification?
Lowercase letters appended to master horizon symbols to indicate specific characteristics or processes.
What does Pedogenic mean?
Relating to the processes involved in the formation of soil.
What is Parent Material?
The unconsolidated organic and mineral material from which soil is formed.
What is Turbation?
The mixing of soil horizons, often caused by biological activity or shrink-swell processes in high clay soils.
What are Slickensides?
Smooth, striated surfaces on soil structural units (peds) caused by shearing forces in shrinking and swelling clays.
What is Mottling in soil?
Patches or spots of different colors within a soil horizon, often indicative of fluctuating water table and reducing/oxidizing conditions.
What is Gleying?
A process occurring under saturated and anaerobic conditions, resulting in bluish-gray or greenish-gray colors due to the reduction of iron.
What is a Soil Classification System?
A method of organizing information and ideas about soils into hierarchical groups based on their properties.
What is a Pedon?
The smallest, three-dimensional body at the earth’s surface considered to be a soil unit for description and classification.
What are Taxa?
The defined classes or units within a soil classification system.
What is Soil Genesis?
The study of how soils form and develop through the action of soil-forming factors and processes.
What are Differentiae?
The properties used to distinguish between different soil taxa.
What is an Order in soil classification?
The highest category in the Canadian System of Soil Classification, based on properties reflecting the soil environment and dominant soil-forming processes.
What is a Great Group?
A subdivision of an Order, based on properties reflecting differences in the strengths of dominant processes or major contributions of additional processes.
What is a Subgroup?
A subdivision of a Great Group, differentiated based on the kind and arrangement of horizons indicating conformity to the central concept, intergrading to another order, or special features.
What is a Family in soil classification?
A subdivision of a Subgroup, differentiated based on parent material characteristics and soil climatic factors.
What is a Series in soil classification?
The lowest category in the Canadian System of Soil Classification, differentiated based on detailed features of the pedon within a narrow range of properties.
What does Humic refer to?
Highly decomposed organic material.
What does Fibrous mean in terms of organic material?
Organic material with readily recognizable structures.
