What is Soil?
More What is Soil?
Soil Horizons
Soil Organisms
Soil Properties
100
Rock that is "weathered" to produce soil.
What is "Parent Material"?
100
Soil is composed of these parts.
What are 45% mineral particles, 5% organic matter, 25% water, and 25% air?
100
This soil horizon is an accumulation of plant and animal litter.
What is the O (organic) horizon?
100
These organisms aerate, add organics, and bring nutrients upward from lower soil horizons.
What are worms?
100
The three soil mineral particle sizes that influence plant growth.
What are sand, silt, and clay.
200
Weathering processes that create soil.
What are physical (mechanical), chemical, and biological weathering?
200
This has a spongy structure and is formed from partially decomposed plant and animal remains.
What is Humus?
200
Dark and rich in accumulated organic matter and humus (topsoil), may be nutrient poor due to leaching.
What is the A-horizon?
200
These organisms construct tunnels and chambers in the soil, carry organic matter (including seeds) from the surface into lower soil horizons.
What are ANTS?
200
Clay is important in determining many soil characteristics because of this property.
The tiny size of clay particles provides a massive surface area compared to silt and sand.
300
Examples of chemical weathering by organisms.
What are CO2 from respiration combining with water to form carbonic acid, and acids produced by lichens etch tiny cracks into "parent material"?
300
When soil water carrying dissolved mineral nutrients migrate through layers of the soil.
What is Leaching (percolation)?
300
This layer is not always referred to, and when it is included in a soil profile it indicates a horizon of heavy leaching?
What is the E-horizon (Eluviation layer)?
300
A symbiotic relationship between the roots of plants and a fungal partner (Mycelium).
What is MYCORRHIZAE?
300
The surface of clay particles are predominantly this electrical charge.
What is negative.
400
This source of physical weathering has created large areas of "young soils" across much of the northern hemisphere.
What are glaciers?
400
What is the difference between Eluviation and Illuviation?
Eluviation is the loss of nutrients and Illuviation is the accumulation of nutrients.
400
This is an illuviation horizon rich in mineral nutrients, but it is sometimes too deep for plant roots to reach.
What is the B horizon?
400
These organisms are the primary means of recycling nutrients in the soil.
What are BACTERIA and FUNGI?
400
Clays typically attract these of ions to its surface.
What are cations? (ions of elements from the first or second periods of the periodic table)
500
The uppermost layer of the Earth's crust, which supports terrestrial plants, animals, and microorganisms.
What is soil?
500
The main cause of leaching?
What is soil water migrating downward through the soil, carrying minerals with it?
500
The layer of partially weathered parent material; too deep for most roots and is often saturated with groundwater.
What is the C- horizon?
500
These affect the soil, while the soil affect what species grow in it.
What are PLANT species?
500
The cations bound to clay are important because...
They are often are essential for plant growth, and since they are bound to the clay, they are available to plants.
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