Soil Science

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Welcome to c/soilscience @ slrpunk.net!

A science based community to discuss and learn all things related to soils.



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Subdisciplines of soil science include:

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Look how thick the Ae (first) horizon is!

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Profile description:

Ah: 0-2 cm; 10YR 2/1; SCL; Weak Fine Granular; Friable

R 2-100 cm

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Solonetzic soils are formed when sodium rich ground water causes 2:1 clays to disperse, forcing columns to form

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The structure is caused by sodium in groundwater dispersing the clay in the soil. These soils are hard to manage since the structure creates a hardpan, which causes water to pool in the subsurface and drown agronomic plants

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Note the layer of carbonates (white) in the lower profile

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Soil testing a few km away in a slightly similar area indicates a grey chromosol. This area has some of the oldest soils in Australia, possibly 370 to 320 million years ago. 20km away is 160 million years and supports a rich rainforest.

https://www.qld.gov.au/environment/land/management/soil/soil-testing/types

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This is a typical forest subsoil for the boreal, but the structure is a lot stronger than normal.

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Not sure if this is something the community here has interest in.

A section of the creek bank has fallen away, revealing that all of the soil has been recently deposited (~ last few decades). The garbage inclusion likely spreads for dozens or maybe hundreds of cubic meters of earth. We don't want to disturb the soil to clean this out so we're limited to surface level cleaning.

On the flipside: it's lots of deep fertile topsoil. The fast growing weeds, like lantana, absolutely love it.

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Introduction
Soil acidity is a limiting factor affecting the growth and yield of many crops all over the world. The basic problems concerning chemical properties of more acid soils are, besides acidity itself, the presence of toxic compounds and elements, such as soluble forms of Al, Fe and Mn, nitrites and various toxic organic acids. Aluminium (Al) toxicity is one of the major constraints on crop productivity on acid soils, which occur on up to 40% of the arable lands of the world. Al is the third most abundant element in the earth’s crust and is toxic to plants when solubilised into soil solution at acidic pH values (Kochian, 1995). A total of 3950 million hectares of land is classed as having acidic soil, of which 15% is used for planting of annual and perennial crops (von Uexküll & Mutert, 1995).

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This area threw me for a loop. Orthic Black Chernozems are common on the prairies, but usually the A horizon tops out at about 30 cm. Further, Glaciolacustrine deposits are usually nearly level.

This A went to 60 cm, and was on hummocky topography. What gives? Well the topography was bedrock controled as I was in the foothills and the proximity to the mountains (colder temps and erosional deposition) yielded the deepest topsoil I've seen to date

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Look at those plates!

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