Soil Horizonation

Soils form in layers, called “horizons”.

Learning Goals

• Be able to name the major soil horizons: A, B, and C
• Know about the additional common soil horizons: O, E, and R
• Understand a bit about the processes that form each of these

Video

I would suggest watching the first of these videos, and then following up with the second if you want an illustrated guide to horizonation and the third if you want to see more about how this is practically approached in the field.

Soil horizons from monoliths

Purdue University’s Extension School created this video describing soils using “monoliths”: columns of preserved soils for teaching and demonstrations.

Animated walkthrough with images

Field

If you like pure old-school US-government camp, you’ll love the intro to this. The vocabulary is very technical, but hearing it will give your ear a chance to start processing the way that soil scientists discuss soils and their profiles.

Further resources

• If you’re interested in how scientists create soil monoliths, this lab exercise from SERC (which you do not have to do!) demonstrates how they are extracted and preserved.

• The World Soil Museum at Wageningen in The Netherlands hosts a massive collection of soils! Here’s a brief introductory video:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.