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Soil chemistry is the study of the chemical characteristics of soil.Soil chemistry is affected by mineral composition, organic matter and environmental factors. In the early 1870s a consulting chemist to the Royal Agricultural Society in England, named J. Thomas Way, performed many experiments on how soils exchange ions, and is considered the father of soil chemistry. [1]
Soil science professionals commonly stay current in soil chemistry, soil physics, soil microbiology, pedology, and applied soil science in related disciplines. One exciting effort drawing in soil scientists in the U.S. as of 2004 is the Soil Quality Initiative. Central to the Soil Quality Initiative is developing indices of soil health and then ...
This is one of the ways that solid materials in soil alter the chemistry of the soil. CEC affects many aspects of soil chemistry, and is used as a measure of soil fertility, as it indicates the capacity of the soil to retain several nutrients (e.g. K +, NH 4 +, Ca 2+) in plant-available form.
Soil physics is the study of soil's physical properties and processes. It is applied to management and prediction under natural and managed ecosystems. Soil physics deals with the dynamics of physical soil components and their phases as solids, liquids, and gases. It draws on the principles of physics, physical chemistry, engineering, and ...
Terzaghi's principle applies well to porous materials whose solid constituents are incompressible - soil, for example, is composed of grains of incompressible silica so that the volume change in soil during consolidation is due solely to the rearrangement of these constituents with respect to one another.
A soil test is a laboratory or in-situ analysis to determine the chemical, physical or biological characteristics of a soil. Possibly the most widely conducted soil tests are those performed to estimate the plant-available concentrations of nutrients in order to provide fertilizer recommendations in agriculture.
Agricultural chemistry often aims at preserving or increasing the fertility of soil with the goals of maintaining or improving the agricultural yield and improving the quality of the crop. Soils are analyzed with attention to the inorganic matter (minerals), which comprise most of the mass of dry soil, and organic matter, which consists of ...
In general, organic matter contacting soil has too little nitrogen to support the biosynthetic needs of the decomposing soil microbial population. If the C:N ratio of the decomposing organic matter is above circa 30:1 then the decomposing microbes may absorb nitrogen in mineral form as, e. g., ammonium or nitrates. This mineral nitrogen is said ...