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February 22, 2007

Dedicated To Dirt: State Soils

I ran across a reference to Hawaii having a state soil called Hilo and I was like,"Huh?"

My next thought was, "Is this a farmer thing?". Clearly geologists weren't satisfied with State Gem, State Rock, State Mineral, State Fossil, and State Prehistoric Artifact. We all needed a State Soil. Too bad these soils aren't given protection like state animals and flowers.

But soil? How can someone really get excited over a state soil?

I was intruged, so I looked them up.

Just like we have a stratosphere, we also have a pedosphere (as in foot, or to step on, as best my one year of high school Latin recalls). The Pedosphere is the outermost layer of the Earth's crust where soil hangs out. It's bordered by a lot of stuff: the lithosphere (bedrock beneath the Earth's crust), atmosphere (air above us), hydrosphere (water around us) and biosphere (the relatively small skin of the Earth where life exists).

I know soil by basically two names: topsoil and dirt. It turns out, soils have many names... alluring names like Oklahoma Port and Ohio Miamian and Vermont Tunbridge. The state soil is generally named after the place where it was first got attention.

Soils have all sorts of characteristics from color (red dirt, black silt, loamy greenish brown) to texture to drainage to its chemical composition (clay, iron). Soils are also layered - like much more specifically than topsoil and "the rest of the stuff underneath":

On Top: Surface Horizon or Topsoil- Where new organic materials (humus) decay.

In The Middle: Subsoil - Where the minerals and stuff from the surface accumulate with some rocks.

Down Below: Soil Substratum - Mostly worn but large rocks here, eventually become part of the soil.

Rock Bottom: Solid, hard bedrock which doesn't interact with soil because its buffered by the soil substratum.

Here's a great website by the US Dept of Agriculture that covers the State Soils, with write-ups on each soil profile, complete with soil pictures and characteristics along with a map of where you can go check the soil out in each state.

Posted by sorsha at February 22, 2007 3:35 PM