plsss describe soil profile in 1000 words
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What is a Soil Profile?
On the surface, soils look pretty much the same… dirt. The soil profile is where the secrets of the soil and landscape around it are hidden. The soil profile is defined as a vertical section of the soil that is exposed by a soil pit. A soil pit is a hole that is dug from the surface of the soil to the underlying bedrock.
Because of the way soils develop, most soil profiles are composed of a series of horizons, or layers of soil stacked on top of one another like layers of a cake. These horizons can tell us a lot about how the soil formed and what was going on around the soil in the past, much like a diary of the landscape.
How Does the Soil Profile Develop?
Let's pretend we're looking at a brand-new landscape surface. It could be a bed of lava that just cooled, some rocks and minerals exposed by a receding glacier, debris laid down by a flooding river, or many other things. We call that brand-new landscape surface parent material, and at that point, it is new and not technically soil!
Will it remain that way forever? No… it won't take long before it can be called 'soil,' which just means that the parent material has been altered, or weathered, in some way by the five soil forming factors.
While we discuss the soil forming factors, think about how they might influence a parent material differently in different locations or situations.
An easy way to remember the five soil forming factors is to remember the word ClORPT, where Cl stands for climate, O for organisms, R for relief (another way of saying topography), P for parent material, and T for time.
The climate in which a soil is developed determines many things, most importantly, the amount of water that will flow, or leach, through the profile. It might seem odd that water dissolves rocks or minerals, but the more water a parent material is exposed to, the quicker it will be weathered. Freeze/thaw cycles and other climatic factors also weather parent material.
Organisms, especially plants and soil microorganisms, do a lot to weather parent material by producing acids and other organic matter. Different groups of organisms have different effects on parent materials. For example, trees in a forest have different root systems and produce different organic matter than grasses in a grassland.
Relief, or topography, influences where water and other materials accumulate on or leave the landscape. For example, the bottom of a hill will receive more water than the top because water runs down the hill. So, the parent material at the bottom will have more water leaching through it than the parent material on the top, so the soils will eventually look different.
Parent material, which we've been discussing all along, is what is being altered into soil. While it will change over time because of weathering, a soil with a parent material like basalt lava will be different than a soil with a parent material like beach sand, because the parent materials are so different chemically and physically.
Time is the last soil forming factor. Soils take a very long time to develop; new soils do not have distinguishing profiles or horizons. But given enough time and the other four soil-forming factors, soils develop interesting and storytelling horizons.
On the surface, soils look pretty much the same… dirt. The soil profile is where the secrets of the soil and landscape around it are hidden. The soil profile is defined as a vertical section of the soil that is exposed by a soil pit. A soil pit is a hole that is dug from the surface of the soil to the underlying bedrock.
Because of the way soils develop, most soil profiles are composed of a series of horizons, or layers of soil stacked on top of one another like layers of a cake. These horizons can tell us a lot about how the soil formed and what was going on around the soil in the past, much like a diary of the landscape.
How Does the Soil Profile Develop?
Let's pretend we're looking at a brand-new landscape surface. It could be a bed of lava that just cooled, some rocks and minerals exposed by a receding glacier, debris laid down by a flooding river, or many other things. We call that brand-new landscape surface parent material, and at that point, it is new and not technically soil!
Will it remain that way forever? No… it won't take long before it can be called 'soil,' which just means that the parent material has been altered, or weathered, in some way by the five soil forming factors.
While we discuss the soil forming factors, think about how they might influence a parent material differently in different locations or situations.
An easy way to remember the five soil forming factors is to remember the word ClORPT, where Cl stands for climate, O for organisms, R for relief (another way of saying topography), P for parent material, and T for time.
The climate in which a soil is developed determines many things, most importantly, the amount of water that will flow, or leach, through the profile. It might seem odd that water dissolves rocks or minerals, but the more water a parent material is exposed to, the quicker it will be weathered. Freeze/thaw cycles and other climatic factors also weather parent material.
Organisms, especially plants and soil microorganisms, do a lot to weather parent material by producing acids and other organic matter. Different groups of organisms have different effects on parent materials. For example, trees in a forest have different root systems and produce different organic matter than grasses in a grassland.
Relief, or topography, influences where water and other materials accumulate on or leave the landscape. For example, the bottom of a hill will receive more water than the top because water runs down the hill. So, the parent material at the bottom will have more water leaching through it than the parent material on the top, so the soils will eventually look different.
Parent material, which we've been discussing all along, is what is being altered into soil. While it will change over time because of weathering, a soil with a parent material like basalt lava will be different than a soil with a parent material like beach sand, because the parent materials are so different chemically and physically.
Time is the last soil forming factor. Soils take a very long time to develop; new soils do not have distinguishing profiles or horizons. But given enough time and the other four soil-forming factors, soils develop interesting and storytelling horizons.
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