CHAPTER 1

WHY SOIL GENESIS?

1.1

What is soil genesis?

Soil formation or soil genesis refers to changes of soil properties with time in one direction: the content of one component or mineral in a certain horizon decreases or increases, sedimentary layering disappears, etc. Mostiy, such changes are slow, and can be seen only after decades to millenia. So most soil properties that change during soil formation are relatively stable. Sometimes, however, effects of soil formation can be seen within weeks or months. Examples are the quick drop in pH when sulfides oxidize to sulfuric acid upon exposure to air, and the formation of gley mottles when a soil becomes very wet. Most rapid processes are cyclic, however, and not are considered part of soil formation Soils may be moist or dry, and warm or cold, depending on weather and season. Seasonal variations in weather also drive biological processes, which in turn change soil properties. Examples are uptake of water and nutrients by plants, supply of fresh plant litter, and decomposition of plant litter by microorganisms and soil fauna. These cause temporal variations in soil pH, and in contents of certain fractions of soil organic matter (e.g microbial biomass), and of soluble and adsorbed nutrients. Most of such soil properties change in a cyclic way: they are reversible on an annual or seasonal basis, and do not constitute a unidirectional change in soil properties. Therefore they are not considered part of soil genesis. Question: 1.1. Which of the following soil properties may vary strongly within a year, and which can change strongly only over much longer times (decades to millennia)?:(a)-soil temperature in C, (b)- cation exchange capacity (CEC), (c)dissolved salts, (d) clay mineralogy, -(e) soil water retention characteristics,- (f) soil organic matter (SOM) content. The rapid, cyclic processes are part of the complex set of processes that cause the unidirectional changes typical of soil formation. E.g., seasonal snow melt causes strong percolation by water. Over centuries to millenia this causes a marked decrease of

SOIL FORMING FACTORS and SOIL FORMING PROCESSES The properties of any soil are, at least theoretically, determined by five SOIL FORMING FACTORS ([Link], 1898 cited by H. Jenny, 1980): parent material, topography, climate, biota, and time. Any particular combination of these factors will give rise to a certain SOIL FORMING PROCESS, a set of physical, chemical and biological processes that create a particular soil. If we could fully characterize and quantify each factor and describe all relevant processes in a simulation model, we could exactly predict the resulting soil profile. As you will come to realize in this course, reality is too complex for that!

weatherable minerals by leaching. Part B treats many of such short-term physical, chemical and biological processes that are important in soil genesis. It will be clear that a soil is not a static object that can be described once and for all, but a natural entity with a time dimension. A soil comprises living and non-living components. It can be considered as part of an ecosystem. Therefore, a soil should not normally be studied in isolation: the interactions with the rest of the ecosystem to which it belongs should be taken into account. Many publications about soil formation deal with one or a few aspects only, for example, soil chemistry or soil mineralogy. These refer to a subsystem of the soil, which itself is a subsystem of the ecosystem.

1.2. Why study soil genesis ? The study of soil genesis brings order to the overwhelming variety of soils that are observed in the world, and links the field of soil science to other scientific disciplines. A basic understanding of the main soil forming factors and soil forming processes (see box above), helps to order soil information, which can be very useful during soil survey or when setting up a system of soil classification. Also when you study plant-soil interactions or investigate consequences of large-scale human perturbations (climate change, acid rain, salinization or alkalinization due to improper irrigation and drainage) a good general understanding of soil genesis is indispensable. Last but not least, the study of soil formation is the way to satisfy your curiosity about the many different and wondrous phenomena that can be observed in soil profiles all over the world.

Question 1.2. The Soil Forming Factor (state factor) approach is often used to study the effect of one factor, by seeking sequences of soils where one factor varies, and the others stay constant, a) Give an example of a chronosequence (soil age varies), a climosequence (climate varies) and a toposequence (elevation varies), b) the state factor approach assumes that (i) the factors are independent, and (ii) state factors influence the soil, but not vice versa. Criticize these assumptions.

1.3. How to study soil genesis? WHAT HAPPENED? When you try to explain the morphology and underlying physical, chemical en mineralogical properties of a certain soil profile, you have to distinguish two kinds of questions. First: "WHAT physical, chemical/mineralogical and biological properties of a soil profile are due to soil formation?", or: "In what respect does the soil differ from its parent material?" HOW DID IT HAPPEN? Second: "HOW did the soil form?', or: "Which physical, chemical and biological processes have formed the soil?" A problem with the WHAT? question is that we first have to distinguish between properties caused by variations in parent material (geogenesis), and the effects soil formation upon a given parent material by the action of soil forming factors (pedogenesis). A related problem is that we can rarely be sure of the nature of the parent material of a soil profile, and of variations of parent material with depth. Is a clayey surface soil over a sandy subsoil the result of weathering of more sandy parent material, or did it result from sedimentation of finer material? Furthermore, geogenesis and pedogenesis may alternate, which sometimes blurs the distinction between "parent material" and "soil". Ways to test assumptions about parent material will be discussed in chapter 5. Question 1.3. Give examples of parent materials or landscapes where the distinction between geogenesis and pedogenisis is difficult, and where it is relatively easy. Often, HOW? questions are difficult too, because most processes cannot be observed directiy: they take place under the soil surface, and most processes are so slow that their effects are not noticeable within the few years normally available for research. A large part of this book is devoted to tricks to get around these problems. But as with all sciences dealing with the past, it is fundamentally impossible to be really certain about an answer, because we have not been there to observe what happened.

WHAT has happened can often be inferred in the field from morphological differences between the C horizon and the overlying soil horizons . Samples from different soil horizons can be studied further in the laboratory, e.g. microscopically, or by chemical, physical and mineralogical methods. Specific analyses to identify certain features of soil formation will be presented in later chapters. With knowledge about the reference situation (= the unchanged parent material), one can identify and sometimes quantify the changes that have taken place in the soil. HOW soil formation takes place, can be extrapolated from processes that can be observed over shorter time scales in the field or in the laboratory: mineral weathering, ion exchange, oxidation-reduction reactions, peptization and coagulation of colloids, transport of solutes or suspended solids, nutrient uptake by plants, decomposition of organic matter, burrowing activities of soil organisms, etc. Soil formation can also be simulated in artificial soil columns in the laboratory, or by computer simulations of one or more processes acting on a hypothetical soil. To test such models one can use two kinds of data. First: data on the relatively stable properties, such as texture and mineralogy. Second: data from repeated measurements (monitoring) of seasonally variable, dynamic properties such as soil moisture content, the composition of the soil solution, or the soil gas phase etc. The relationships between the different approaches to study soil processes are shown diagrammatically in Figure 1.1. Question 1.4 A silt-textured soil profile in a dry region has a water table within 1 m of the soil surface and has a white crust on the soil surface. You hypothesize that the white layer is a crust of easily soluble salt (your answer to: WHAT?), that has formed by evaporation of slightly saline ground water that has risen by capillary action to the soil surface (your answer to:HOW?). Discuss how you would test your hypothesis. Use Figure 1.1 and refer to nrs. Al, and B2-4. Tools to recognize WHAT happened, and explanations of HOW it happened are given in Part 3. Examples of reconstructions of HOW and WHAT in complex situations, in which we use the iterations indicated in Figure 1.1, are given in Chapter 15.

1.4. Answers Question 1.1 Soil temperatures undergo daily and annual cycles. Clay mineralogy can change only very slowly. Soil organic matter (SOM) content varies very slightiy (by a few % of total SOM) on a seasonal basis. Differences in SOM content between different soils result from soil formation. The same is true for CEC and water retention, which depend mainly on SOM, soil texture and clay mineralogy. Dissolved salts vary seasonally in most soils. Very high salt contents as in saline soils, however, are the result of soil formation.

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A. WHAT? PROPERTIES -chemical/mineralogical -physical -biological -morphological A1. morphological observations; measurement of 'stable' soil properties

B. HOW? PROCESSES -chemical/mineralogical -physical -biological

MODELS B1. Conceptual 82. Simulation

83. IVIonotoring of processes in the field

84. Similation of processes in the laboratory

Figure 1.1. Soil forming processes and their effects on soil properties (italics), and approaches to the study of soil forming processes (boxes). Arrows show how the research activites are linked. The initial hypothesis (conceptual model Bl) is based on morphological properties and other data on the soil profile (Al). The hypothesis can be tested by a combination of B3, B4, and simulation modelling (B2), and further research (B1) on the soil profile itself.

Question 1.2 a) chronosequence: beach ridges or river terraces of different age; climosequence: continental-scale transects in loess landscapes; toposequence: any elevation gradient where parent material stays constant, b) (i) the state factors are at best only fairly independent: climate varies with elevation; biota vary strongly with climate, (ii) soil properties influenced by biota may strongly feed back to the vegetation. Such feedbacks are even used by some plants (e.g. peatmoss, Sphagnum) to outcompete other plants (Van Breemen, 1995).

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Question 1.3 Geogenesis and pedogenesis can be distinguished easily in soils on Quaternary loess, and in residual soils derived from underlying igneous or metamorphic rock. Difficult cases: soils in layered volcanic ash, on active floodplains, and on very old, extended land surfaces that have undergone repeated cycles of erosion and sedimentation. Question 1.4 Al. Analyze the white crust and the groundwater (does the crust material dissolve in water? Has a water extract of the crust a composition similar to that of the ground water? B2. Calculate the capillary rise permitted by the texture of the soil, and compare that to the depth of the ground water below the surface. B3. Does the thickness of the crust or the concentration of water-extractable salts in the surface layer increase with time? B4. Fill a tube (say, 1 m long ) in the lab with the soil from the field, create a water table at the bottom and supply slightly saline water to make up for evaporation losses. Does a salt crust develop?

1.5. References Jenny, H., 1980 The Soil Resource Springer Verlag, 377 pp. Van Breemen, N., 1995. How Sphagnum bogs down other plants. Trends in Ecology and Evolution 10:270-275.

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