The
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)french: link=no, Organisation des Nations unies pour l'alimentation et l'agriculture; it, Organizzazione delle Nazioni Unite per l'Alimentazione e l'Agricoltura is an intern ...
(FAO) developed a supra-national classification, which offers useful generalizations about
pedogenesis
Soil formation, also known as pedogenesis, is the process of soil genesis as regulated by the effects of place, environment, and history. Biogeochemical processes act to both create and destroy order (anisotropy) within soils. These alterations l ...
in relation to the interactions between the main soil-forming factors. It was first published in form of the
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
Soil Map of the World (1974) (scale 1 : 5 M.). Many of the names offered in that classification are known in many countries and do have similar meanings.
Originally developed as a legend to the Soil Map of the World, the classification was applied by
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...
sponsored projects. Many countries modified this system to fit their particular needs.
The Soil Units (106) were mapped as Soil Associations, designated by the dominant soil unit:
* with soil phases (soil properties, such as saline, lithic, stony),
* with three
textural classes (coarse, medium, and fine)
* three slopes classes superimposed (level to gently undulating, rolling to hilly, and steeply dissected to mountainous)
The 106 Soil Units form 26 Soil Groups. The FAO soil map was a very simple classification system with units very broad, but was the first truly international system, and most soils could be accommodated on the basis of their field descriptions. The FAO soil map was intended for mapping soils at a continental scale but not at local scale.
In 1988 the FAO published a ''Revised Legend'' with 153 Soil Units forming 28 Major Soil Groupings. It serves as basis for the ''Harmonized World Soil Database''.
In 1998 this system was replaced by the
World Reference Base for Soil Resources The World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB) is an international soil classification system for naming soils and creating legends for soil maps. The currently valid version is the fourth edition 2022. It is edited by a working group of the Inte ...
.
Soil groups
FAO Soil Groups (Legend, 1974)
FAO Major Soil Groupings (Revised Legend, 1988)
See also
*
USDA soil taxonomy
USDA soil taxonomy (ST) developed by the United States Department of Agriculture and the National Cooperative Soil Survey provides an elaborate classification of soil types according to several parameters (most commonly their properties) and in sev ...
*
International Committee on Anthropogenic Soils (
ICOMANTH)
*
Soil types
A soil type is a taxonomic unit in soil science. All soils that share a certain set of well-defined properties form a distinctive soil type. Soil type is a technical term of soil classification, the science that deals with the systematic categoriz ...
*
World Reference Base for Soil Resources The World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB) is an international soil classification system for naming soils and creating legends for soil maps. The currently valid version is the fourth edition 2022. It is edited by a working group of the Inte ...
References
World map using the FAO legendKey to the FAO soil units 1974FAO Revised Legend 1988
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fao Soil Classification
Land management
Classification, FAO