Tutorial:England & Wales

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1 Soil Survey of England & Wales

[edit] Soil Survey of England & Wales

The soil survey of England and Wales is heirarchical consisting of Major soil groups, groups, subgroups, and soil series. There are 10 Major Soil Groups the details of which are given in the table below. The soil series is the lowest level of classification and defines homogeneous soil profiles. On soil maps, different soil series are often grouped according to a common parent material into soil associations.

Major Groups	Characteristics
Terrestrial raw soils	Consist of little altered mineral material and have no diagnostic surface or sub-surface horizon attributable to pedogenic processes. They normally lack a continuous vegetative cover.
Raw gley soils	Have a gleyed sub-surface horizon, lack a distinct topsoil, and have an unripened mineral horizon. Chiefly confined to intertidal flats.
Lithomorphic soils	Have a distinct humose or peaty topsoil and a little altered mineral sub-surface horizon (C) starting within 40 cm of the surface and no diagnostic B horizon. Includes rendzinas and rankers formed on calcareous and noncalcareous bed rock respectively.
Pelosols	Slowly permeable clayey soil that have formed from clay-rich sedimentary rocks and Pleistocene deposits. Pelosols normally have gleyic features but these may be weakly expressed where the parent material is red e.g. Keuper Marl.
Brown Soils	Have a weathered or argillic B horizon, normally brownish or reddish, and no gleyed subsurface horizon. Are widespread on various permeable materials.
Podzolic soils	Have a podzolic B horizon. An unincorporated acid organic layer up to 40 cm thick is usually present at the surface. Soime have a pale E horizon or a dark Bh horizon containing translocated organic matter immediately below the topsoil.
Surface-water gley soils	Soils in Pleistocene or older deposits and have gleyed sub-surface horizons primarily attributable to seasonal saturation by surface water from precipitation or lateral soil water flow. Have distinct humose or peaty topsoils.
Ground-water gley soils	Have gleyed subsurface horizons in recent alluvium or older deposits that are permeable, in which gleying is attributable to the presence of a shallow fluctuating ground-water table. Have distinct humose or peaty topsoils and no podzolic B horizon.
Man-made soils	Have a thick man-made A horizon, a disturbed subsurface layer or both.
Peat soils	Organic soils derived from partially decomposed plant remains that accumulated under waterlogged conditions. A peat soil should have a surface organic horizon at least 40 cm thick.

[edit] Soil horizons

A key to some of the main soil horizons is given to the right, click on the image to access a high resolution version. More detailed information about the diagnostic horizons and properties of each soil type can be found by following the links in the table above.