Berkshire (soil)
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Berkshire (soil)
Berkshire soil series is the name given to a well-drained loam or sandy loam soil which has developed on glacial till in parts of southern Quebec, eastern New York State and New England south to Massachusetts. It belongs to the podzol soil group and is one of the most important soils in its area of occurrence, supporting extensive forests and a fair number of farms. Many Berkshire soils lack the eluvial (E) horizon characteristic of podzols because they have a history of being cleared for cultivation. Geology The deep glacial till which provides the foundation of the Berkshire series contains material derived from mica schist with fragments of gneiss, granite and phyllite also present in some areas. These rocks are not high in mineral nutrients but provide enough fine-grained material to produce a loamy soil. Agriculture Cleared areas of the Berkshire series support a livestock industry with an emphasis on dairying. Grasses, legumes and silage corn are raised for cattle food ...
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Loam
Loam (in geology and soil science) is soil composed mostly of sand (particle size > ), silt (particle size > ), and a smaller amount of clay (particle size < ). By weight, its mineral composition is about 40–40–20% concentration of sand–silt–clay, respectively. These proportions can vary to a degree, however, and result in different types of loam soils: sandy loam, silty loam, clay loam, sandy clay loam, silty clay loam, and loam. In the , textural classification triangle, the only soil that is not predominantly sand, silt, or clay is called "loam". Loam soils generally contain more nutrients, moisture, and

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Liming (soil)
Liming is the application (to soil) of calcium- (Ca) and magnesium (Mg)-rich materials in various forms, including marl, chalk, limestone, burnt lime or hydrated lime. In acid soils, these materials react as a base and neutralize soil acidity. This often improves plant growth and increases the activity of soil bacteria, but oversupply may result in harm to plant life. Liming can also improve aggregate stability on clay soils. For this purpose structure lime, products containing calcium oxide (CaO) or hydroxide (Ca(OH)2) in mixes with calcium carbonate (CaCO3), are often used. Structure liming can reduce losses of clay and nutrients from soil aggregates. The degree to which a given amount of lime per unit of soil volume will increase soil pH depends on the buffer capacity of the soil (this is generally related to soil cation exchange capacity or CEC). Soils with low CEC will usually show a more marked pH increase than soils with high CEC. But the low-CEC soils will witness more r ...
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Agriculture In Canada
Canada is one of the largest agricultural producers and exporters in the world. As with other developed nations, the proportion of the population agriculture employed and agricultural GDP as a percentage of the national GDP fell dramatically over the 20th century, but it remains an important element of the Canadian economy. A wide range of agriculture is practised in Canada, from sprawling wheat fields of the prairies to summer produce of the Okanagan valley. In the federal government, overview of Canadian agriculture is the responsibility of the Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food. Major agricultural products Various factors affect the socio-economic characteristics of Canadian agriculture. The 2006 ''Census of Agriculture'' listed seven: Quantity and type of farms; Biogeography: crop and land use areas; land management practices; Quantity of livestock and poultry; Agricultural engineering: Farm machinery and equipment; Farm capital; Farm operating expenses and receipt ...
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Pedology
Pedology (from Greek: πέδον, ''pedon'', "soil"; and λόγος, ''logos'', "study") is a discipline within soil science which focuses on understanding and characterizing soil formation, evolution, and the theoretical frameworks for modeling soil bodies, often in the context of the natural environment. Pedology is often seen as one of two main branches of soil inquiry, the other being edaphology which is traditionally more agronomically oriented and focuses on how soil properties influence plant communities (natural or cultivated). In studying the fundamental phenomenology of soils, e.g. soil formation (aka pedogenesis), pedologists pay particular attention to observing soil morphology and the geographic distributions of soils, and the placement of soil bodies into larger temporal and spatial contexts. In so doing, pedologists develop systems of soil classification, soil maps, and theories for characterizing temporal and spatial interrelations among soils . There are a few note ...
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American Basswood
''Tilia americana'' is a species of tree in the family Malvaceae, native to eastern North America, from southeast Manitoba east to New Brunswick, southwest to northeast Oklahoma, southeast to South Carolina, and west along the Niobrara River to Cherry County, Nebraska. It is the sole representative of its genus in the Western Hemisphere, assuming ''T. caroliniana'' is treated as a subspecies or local ecotype of ''T. americana''. Common names include American basswood and American linden. Description The American basswood is a medium-sized to large deciduous tree reaching a height of exceptionally with a trunk diameter of at maturity. It grows faster than many North American hardwoods, often twice the annual growth rate of American beech and many birch species. Life expectancy is around 200 years, with flowering and seeding generally occurring between 15 and 100 years, though occasionally seed production may start as early as eight years. The crown is domed, the branches ...
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Fraxinus Americana
''Fraxinus americana'', the white ash or American ash, is a species of '' ash tree'' native to eastern and central North America. The species is native to mesophytic hardwood forests from Nova Scotia west to Minnesota, south to northern Florida, and southwest to eastern Texas. Isolated populations have also been found in western Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ..., Wyoming, and Colorado, and the species is reportedly naturalized in Hawaii. There are an estimated 8 billion ash trees in the United States – the majority being the white ash trees and the Fraxinus pennsylvanica, green ash trees. Characteristics The name white ash derives from the glaucous undersides of the leaves. It is similar in appearance to the green ash, making identification difficult. ...
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Balsam Fir
''Abies balsamea'' or balsam fir is a North American fir, native to most of eastern and central Canada (Newfoundland west to central Alberta) and the northeastern United States (Minnesota east to Maine, and south in the Appalachian Mountains to West Virginia). Description Balsam fir is a small to medium-size evergreen tree typically tall, occasionally reaching a height of . The narrow conic crown consists of dense, dark-green leaves. The bark on young trees is smooth, grey, and with resin blisters (which tend to spray when ruptured), becoming rough and fissured or scaly on old trees. The leaves are flat and needle-like, long, dark green above often with a small patch of stomata near the tip, and two white stomatal bands below, and a slightly notched tip. They are arranged spirally on the shoot, but with the leaf bases twisted so that the leaves appear to be in two more-or-less horizontal rows on either side of the shoot. The needles become shorter and thicker the higher they ...
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Red Spruce
''Picea rubens'', commonly known as red spruce, is a species of spruce native to eastern North America, ranging from eastern Quebec and Nova Scotia, west to the Adirondack Mountains and south through New England along the Appalachians to western North Carolina.Farjon, A. (1990). ''Pinaceae. Drawings and Descriptions of the Genera''. Koeltz Scientific Books . This species is also known as yellow spruce, West Virginia spruce, eastern spruce, and he-balsam. Description Red spruce is a perennial, shade-tolerant, late successional coniferous tree that under optimal conditions grows to tall with a trunk diameter of about , though exceptional specimens can reach tall and in diameter. It has a narrow conical crown. The leaves are needle-like, yellow-green, long, four-sided, curved, with a sharp point, and extend from all sides of the twig. The bark is gray-brown on the surface and red-brown on the inside, thin, and scaly. The wood is light, soft, has narrow rings, and has a sligh ...
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American Beech
''Fagus grandifolia'', the American beech or North American beech, is a species of beech tree native to the eastern United States and extreme southeast of Canada. Description ''Fagus grandifolia'' is a large deciduous tree growing to tall, with smooth, silver-gray Bark (botany), bark. The leaves are dark green, simple and sparsely-toothed with small teeth that terminate each vein, long (rarely ), with a short Petiole (botany), petiole. The winter twigs are distinctive among North American trees, being long and slender ( by ) with two rows of overlapping scales on the buds. Beech buds are distinctly thin and long, resembling cigars; this characteristic makes beech trees relatively easy to identify. The tree is monoecious, with flowers of both sexes on the same tree. The fruit is a small, sharply-angled nut (fruit), nut, borne in pairs in a soft-spined, four-lobed husk. It has two means of reproduction: one is through the usual dispersal of seedlings, and the other is through r ...
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Pine
A pine is any conifer tree or shrub in the genus ''Pinus'' () of the family Pinaceae. ''Pinus'' is the sole genus in the subfamily Pinoideae. The World Flora Online created by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden accepts 187 species names of pines as current, together with more synonyms. The American Conifer Society (ACS) and the Royal Horticultural Society accept 121 species. Pines are commonly found in the Northern Hemisphere. ''Pine'' may also refer to the lumber derived from pine trees; it is one of the more extensively used types of lumber. The pine family is the largest conifer family and there are currently 818 named cultivars (or trinomials) recognized by the ACS. Description Pine trees are evergreen, coniferous resinous trees (or, rarely, shrubs) growing tall, with the majority of species reaching tall. The smallest are Siberian dwarf pine and Potosi pinyon, and the tallest is an tall ponderosa pine located in southern Oregon's Rogue Riv ...
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Birch
A birch is a thin-leaved deciduous hardwood tree of the genus ''Betula'' (), in the family Betulaceae, which also includes alders, hazels, and hornbeams. It is closely related to the beech-oak family Fagaceae. The genus ''Betula'' contains 30 to 60 known taxa of which 11 are on the IUCN 2011 Red List of Threatened Species. They are a typically rather short-lived pioneer species widespread in the Northern Hemisphere, particularly in northern areas of temperate climates and in boreal climates. Description Birch species are generally small to medium-sized trees or shrubs, mostly of northern temperate and boreal climates. The simple leaves are alternate, singly or doubly serrate, feather-veined, petiolate and stipulate. They often appear in pairs, but these pairs are really borne on spur-like, two-leaved, lateral branchlets. The fruit is a small samara, although the wings may be obscure in some species. They differ from the alders (''Alnus'', another genus in the family) in th ...
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Maple
''Acer'' () is a genus of trees and shrubs commonly known as maples. The genus is placed in the family Sapindaceae.Stevens, P. F. (2001 onwards). Angiosperm Phylogeny Website. Version 9, June 2008 nd more or less continuously updated since http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/research/APweb/. There are approximately 132 species, most of which are native to Asia, with a number also appearing in Europe, northern Africa, and North America. Only one species, ''Acer laurinum'', extends to the Southern Hemisphere.Gibbs, D. & Chen, Y. (2009The Red List of Maples Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) The type species of the genus is the sycamore maple, '' Acer pseudoplatanus'', the most common maple species in Europe.van Gelderen, C. J. & van Gelderen, D. M. (1999). ''Maples for Gardens: A Color Encyclopedia'' Maples usually have easily recognizable palmate leaves ('' Acer negundo'' is an exception) and distinctive winged fruits. The closest relatives of the maples are the horse c ...
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