Monday, April 7, 2008

Dirt: It's what's for dinner


Today we began our unit on soil. It can be a little scary to think that one tablespoon of soil holds more living organisms than there are people living on the Earth! Soil is essential to life on this planet and without it we would not exist.

BlogWork
Go to the following website about the 12 soil orders.
Click on the link providing information about the 12 soil orders.
Pick one of the orders (example: Gelisols or Oxisols). Click on it for more detailed information.
Write a summary of one of the 12 types of soil.
Also, make a prediction as to what type of soil we have in our ecoplots.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mollisols is a very important soil. It is the soil in the grassland. it is covered by a thick surface. Mollisols real name is mollic epipedon the soil comes from very old organic materials that are taken from roots. This soil covers about 25% of all the land.

Anonymous said...

Mollisols is a type of soil that is found in Grasslands around the
Great Plains. It has a dark and thick surface. It is very important and it is used a lot!!

Anonymous said...

gelisols- soil that is covered by permifrost.it has the least poluthon of any other story.

Histosols- soild made of mostly organic matter, they are usually in wetlands.

spodosols- are acid based soil, that usually dont suport forests
I think that we have spodosols soil.

Anonymous said...

Vertisols are made mostly with clay, and usually gather into clumps when the air is dry. Between the clumps, are usually deep wide cracks in the soil. Once it rains, the cracks go away, and the dirt expands again. This usually prevents scructures from holding up when the climate changes. Vertisols appear in places like texas, and you will see it in 2.4% of the land on earth. There are 6 types of Vertisols: Aquerts, Cryerts, Xererts, Torrerts, Usterts, and Uderts. I am not sure what kind of soil occupies our ecoplot, but I don't think there are any vertisols.

Anonymous said...

Histosols are soils that are composed mainly of organic substance. They enclose at least 20-30% organic matter by weight and are more than 40 cm thick. Most Histosols form in areas such as wetlands where limited drainage inhibits the decomposition of plant and animal remains, allowing these organic substances to accumulate over time. They are mined for fuel and horticultural products

Anonymous said...

A lot of Entisols are found in steep, rocky settings, and are of recent origin. Entisols of large river valleys and associated shore deposits gives land to grow crops and provides millions of homes Entisols covers 16% of the land parts of our Earth that arn't covered in ice and so next to Inceptisols are the most extensive. It's 5 sub-orders are Aquents, Arents, Psamments, Fluvents, and Orthents.

Anonymous said...

the soil i picked was histosis and the soils are mostly composed with organic materials. most histosols in its environment like wet lands where they drain the inhibitats for decompoistion. the histosols are accumulating over the time spend.

Anonymous said...

Vertisols
Vertisols is a soil that is affected by precipitation. This soil is found in every continent except Antarctica. Most of this soil is found in Australia. It swells up and dries in times of the year. It rains the ground swells. But when it doesn’t rain one month to say the least it dries up. This soil isn’t good for plants which is why they don’t. You may find this soil in or near the Grand Canyon. After reading about the other soils and I think that gelisols is the soil in our biome.

Anonymous said...

Histosols are soils that are mainly put together of(organic materials)dead animals and plants that decompose on the ground, also wetlands.
They are often considered "mucks and peats" to some Industries because you can not build on top of it... easily.

Anonymous said...

Oxisols is a soil found in strictly tropical regions. This soil has low levels of minerals and nutrients. The consequence of this is the ground has is extremely infertile. The nutrients the ground does get are from the abundant vegetation when it dies and decomposes. It’s this plant life that sucks it fry in the first place. However, Oxisols can be made suitable for agriculture with enriching fertilizers. I doubt this is the soil found in our ecoplots because U.S. oxisols only exists in Hawaii. I think our dirt could be ultisols or alfisols.

Anonymous said...

Ultisols are often found in tropical forests. The lush plant growth has sucked all of the nutrients out of the soil. Without fertilizer, they are not very good for farming. Still, they support 18% of the world's population.
Our ecoplot is probably an Alfisol.

Anonymous said...

Andisols are what they are because of volcanic ash, making it a bad place for most plants to grow as the dirt itself inhales a lot of phosphorus. It is also known for its ability to hold more liquid the most or all other dirts.

Anonymous said...

Andisols are soils that have formed from volcanic ash. They are different from other soil because they have lots of glass and materials such as allophane, imogolite, and ferrihydrite. As a result, Andisols soil has different chemical and physical properties some of them are high water-holding capability and the ability to make large quantities of phosphorus.
unavailable to plants. Andisols soil has the least amount of soil on the world surface the soil only takes up for ~1% of the ice-free land. but over all the soil is very rich and is some of the best in the world.

Anonymous said...

Vertisols is a clay-like soil that can change depth and volume depending on the moisture. The wetter the soil is, the more it expands. The dryer it gets, the more it shrinks. Vertisols is scattered throughout the southern and western US, and if found mostly in Texas. Too bad there is none in PA.

Anonymous said...

Histosols-was about the organic materials that are in the ground. It's olny 20/30% of it natulr. Histosols is mostly found in wetlands.Decomposition of plants and animal that died makes organic materials

Anonymous said...

Vertisols is the soil that occupies the desert areas of the world. It is only found in 2.4% of the world, and tend to expand when wet.

This was interesting to me because I always wondered how this type of dirt reacted to moisture, and I now know that it expands to fill the "Cracked" areas around the soil.

Anonymous said...

Mollisols is type of soil found in grassland ecosystems. This is a thick and has a dark surface horizon that is also known as mollic epipedon. This dark surface is a result of long-term addition of natural materials that have been deprived from the plant roots. Mollisols occupies 7.00% of ice-free land area. In the United States, Mollisols covers 21.5% of the land area. Mollisols is one of the most important and productive farming soils in the world.

Anonymous said...

Gelisols is the rarest of all of the types of soils. It takes up only 0.4% of the Earth's surface. Gelisols can be found beneath permafrost in cold climates such as tundras and taigas. Due to the freezing temperatures, Gelisols has a very slow speed for the decomposition process of organic materials, and therefore have the second largest amount of organic materials, next to wetland areas. Gelisols is also vulnerable to extinction due to it's high sensitivity to human activities.