Soil

Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Some scientific definitions distinguish ''dirt'' from ''soil'' by restricting the former term specifically to displaced soil.

Soil consists of a solid phase of minerals and organic matter (the soil matrix), as well as a porous phase that holds gases (the soil atmosphere) and water (the soil solution). Accordingly, soil is a three-state system of solids, liquids, and gases. Soil is a product of several factors: the influence of climate, relief (elevation, orientation, and slope of terrain), organisms, and the soil's parent materials (original minerals) interacting over time. It continually undergoes development by way of numerous physical, chemical and biological processes, which include weathering with associated erosion. Given its complexity and strong internal connectedness, soil ecologists regard soil as an ecosystem.

Most soils have a dry bulk density (density of soil taking into account voids when dry) between 1.1 and 1.6 g/cm³, though the soil particle density is much higher, in the range of 2.6 to 2.7 g/cm³. Little of the soil of planet Earth is older than the Pleistocene and none is older than the Cenozoic, although fossilized soils are preserved from as far back as the Archean.

The pedosphere interfaces with the lithosphere, the hydrosphere, the atmosphere, and the biosphere. Collectively, Earth's body of soil, called the pedosphere, has four important functions:

* as a medium for plant growth
* as a means of water storage, supply and purification
* as a modifier of Earth's atmosphere
* as a habitat for organisms

All of these functions, in their turn, modify the soil and its properties.

Soil science has two basic branches of study: edaphology and pedology. ''Edaphology'' studies the influence of soils on living things. ''Pedology'' focuses on the formation, description (morphology), and classification of soils in their natural environment. In engineering terms, soil is included in the broader concept of regolith, which also includes other loose material that lies above the bedrock, as can be found on the Moon and other celestial objects.

Processes

Soil is a major component of the Earth's ecosystem. The world's ecosystems are impacted in far-reaching ways by the processes carried out in the soil, with effects ranging from ozone depletion and global warming to rainforest destruction and water pollution. With respect to Earth's carbon cycle, soil acts as an important carbon reservoir, and it is potentially one of the most reactive to human disturbance and climate change. As the planet warms, it has been predicted that soils will add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere due to increased biological activity at higher temperatures, a positive feedback (amplification). This prediction has, however, been questioned on consideration of more recent knowledge on soil carbon turnover.

Soil acts as an engineering medium, a habitat for soil organisms, a recycling system for nutrients and organic wastes, a regulator of water quality, a modifier of atmospheric composition, and a medium for plant growth, making it a critically important provider of ecosystem services. Since soil has a tremendous range of available niches and habitats, it contains a prominent part of the Earth's genetic diversity. A gram of soil can contain billions of organisms, belonging to thousands of species, mostly microbial and largely still unexplored. Soil has a mean prokaryotic density of roughly 10⁸ organisms per gram, whereas the ocean has no more than 10⁷ prokaryotic organisms per milliliter (gram) of seawater. Organic carbon held in soil is eventually returned to the atmosphere through the process of respiration carried out by heterotrophic organisms, but a substantial part is retained in the soil in the form of soil organic matter; tillage usually increases the rate of soil respiration, leading to the depletion of soil organic matter. Since plant roots need oxygen, aeration is an important characteristic of soil. This ventilation can be accomplished via networks of interconnected soil pores, which also absorb and hold rainwater making it readily available for uptake by plants. Since plants require a nearly continuous supply of water, but most regions receive sporadic rainfall, the water-holding capacity of soils is vital for plant survival.

Soils can effectively remove impurities, kill disease agents, and degrade contaminants, this latter property being called natural attenuation. Typically, soils maintain a net absorption of oxygen and methane and undergo a net release of carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide. Soils offer plants physical support, air, water, temperature moderation, nutrients, and protection from toxins. Soils provide readily available nutrients to plants and animals by converting dead organic matter into various nutrient forms.

Composition

A typical soil is about 50% solids (45% mineral and 5% organic matter), and 50% voids (or pores) of which half is occupied by water and half by gas. The percent soil mineral and organic content can be treated as a constant (in the short term), while the percent soil water and gas content is considered highly variable whereby a rise in one is simultaneously balanced by a reduction in the other. The pore space allows for the infiltration and movement of air and water, both of which are critical for life existing in soil. Compaction, a common problem with soils, reduces this space, preventing air and water from reaching plant roots and soil organisms.

Given sufficient time, an undifferentiated soil will evolve a soil profile which consists of two or more layers, referred to as soil horizons. These differ in one or more properties such as in their texture, structure, density, porosity, consistency, temperature, color, and reactivity. The horizons differ greatly in thickness and generally lack sharp boundaries; their development is dependent on the type of parent material, the processes that modify those parent materials, and the soil-forming factors that influence those processes. The biological influences on soil properties are strongest near the surface, though the geochemical influences on soil properties increase with depth. Mature soil profiles typically include three basic master horizons: A, B, and C. The solum normally includes the A and B horizons. The living component of the soil is largely confined to the solum, and is generally more prominent in the A horizon. It has been suggested that the ''pedon'', a column of soil extending vertically from the surface to the underlying parent material and large enough to show the characteristics of all its horizons, could be subdivided in the ''humipedon'' (the living part, where most soil organisms are dwelling, corresponding to the ''humus form''), the ''copedon'' (in intermediary position, where most weathering of minerals takes place) and the ''lithopedon'' (in contact with the subsoil).

The soil texture is determined by the relative proportions of the individual particles of sand, silt, and clay that make up the soil. The interaction of the individual mineral particles with organic matter, water, gases via biotic and abiotic processes causes those particles to flocculate (stick together) to form aggregates or peds. Where these aggregates can be identified, a soil can be said to be developed, and can be described further in terms of color, porosity, consistency, reaction ( acidity), etc.

Water is a critical agent in soil development due to its involvement in the dissolution, precipitation, erosion, transport, and deposition of the materials of which a soil is composed. The mixture of water and dissolved or suspended materials that occupy the soil pore space is called the soil solution. Since soil water is never pure water, but contains hundreds of dissolved organic and mineral substances, it may be more accurately called the soil solution. Water is central to the dissolution, precipitation and leaching of minerals from the soil profile. Finally, water affects the type of vegetation that grows in a soil, which in turn affects the development of the soil, a complex feedback which is exemplified in the dynamics of banded vegetation patterns in semi-arid regions.

Soils supply plants with nutrients, most of which are held in place by particles of clay and organic matter ( colloids) The nutrients may be adsorbed on clay mineral surfaces, bound within clay minerals ( absorbed), or bound within organic compounds as part of the living organisms or dead soil organic matter. These bound nutrients interact with soil water to buffer the soil solution composition (attenuate changes in the soil solution) as soils wet up or dry out, as plants take up nutrients, as salts are leached, or as acids or alkalis are added.

Plant nutrient availability is affected by soil pH, which is a measure of the hydrogen ion activity in the soil solution. Soil pH is a function of many soil forming factors, and is generally lower (more acid) where weathering is more advanced.

Most plant nutrients, with the exception of nitrogen, originate from the minerals that make up the soil parent material. Some nitrogen originates from rain as dilute nitric acid and ammonia, but most of the nitrogen is available in soils as a result of nitrogen fixation by bacteria. Once in the soil-plant system, most nutrients are recycled through living organisms, plant and microbial residues (soil organic matter), mineral-bound forms, and the soil solution. Both living soil organisms (microbes, animals and plant roots) and soil organic matter are of critical importance to this recycling, and thereby to soil formation and soil fertility. Microbial soil enzymes may release nutrients from minerals or organic matter for use by plants and other microorganisms, sequester (incorporate) them into living cells, or cause their loss from the soil by volatilisation (loss to the atmosphere as gases) or leaching.

Formation

Soil is said to be formed when organic matter has accumulated and colloids are washed downward, leaving deposits of clay, humus, iron oxide, carbonate, and gypsum, producing a distinct layer called the B horizon. This is a somewhat arbitrary definition as mixtures of sand, silt, clay and humus will support biological and agricultural activity before that time. These constituents are moved from one level to another by water and animal activity. As a result, layers (horizons) form in the soil profile. The alteration and movement of materials within a soil causes the formation of distinctive soil horizons. However, more recent definitions of soil embrace soils without any organic matter, such as those regoliths that formed on Mars and analogous conditions in planet Earth deserts.

An example of the development of a soil would begin with the weathering of lava flow bedrock, which would produce the purely mineral-based parent material from which the soil texture forms. Soil development would proceed most rapidly from bare rock of recent flows in a warm climate, under heavy and frequent rainfall. Under such conditions, plants (in a first stage nitrogen-fixing lichens and cyanobacteria then epilithic higher plants) become established very quickly on basaltic lava, even though there is very little organic material. Basaltic minerals commonly weather relatively quickly, according to the Goldich dissolution series. The plants are supported by the porous rock as it is filled with nutrient-bearing water that carries minerals dissolved from the rocks. Crevasses and pockets, local topography of the rocks, would hold fine materials and harbour plant roots. The developing plant roots are associated with mineral-weathering mycorrhizal fungi that assist in breaking up the porous lava, and by these means organic matter and a finer mineral soil accumulate with time. Such initial stages of soil development have been described on volcanoes, inselbergs, and glacial moraines.

How soil formation proceeds is influenced by at least five classic factors that are intertwined in the evolution of a soil: parent material, climate, topography (relief), organisms, and time. When reordered to climate, relief, organisms, parent material, and time, they form the acronym CROPT.

Physical properties

The physical properties of soils, in order of decreasing importance for ecosystem services such as crop production, are texture, structure, bulk density, porosity, consistency, temperature, colour and resistivity. Soil texture is determined by the relative proportion of the three kinds of soil mineral particles, called soil separates: sand, silt, and clay. At the next larger scale, soil structures called peds or more commonly ''soil aggregates'' are created from the soil separates when iron oxides, carbonates, clay, silica and humus, coat particles and