C ENV 110 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Soil Horizon, Weathering, Pedogenesis

• School: UW
• Department: College of the Environment
• Course: C ENV 110
• Professor: Ray Hilborn

Document Summary

C env 110 lecture 14 soil. Solid earth material that has been altered by physical, chemical, and organic processes so that it can support rooted plant life. Engineering definition: anything that can be removed without blasting. Solid rock becomes broken down by rain, --> finer and finer particles. Bed rock --> by various kinds of processes --> gets broken down into soil. Climate: certain climates are more inducive to forming and breaking soil, temperature variation is good for breaking up soil, climate --> affects what types of plants are thre, more rainfall = faster weathering, more erosion. Soils on hillslopes reach an equilibrium thickness, often about 1m. Soils on flat surfaces, such as floodplains or plateaus, tend to thicken through time due to weathering rates being greater than sediment transport rates. Horizontal inputs: floods, tidal exchange, erosions, land-water movement. Litterfall and root turnover (plant material dying --> major source of organic matter)