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Clay is a type of fine-grained natural soil material containing clay minerals [1] (hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates, e.g. kaolinite, Al 2 Si 2 O 5 4). Most pure clay minerals are white or light-coloured, but natural clays show a variety of colours from impurities, such as a reddish or brownish colour from small amounts of iron oxide .
For example, biological soil crusts are more dominated by green algae on more acidic and less salty soils, whereas cyanobacteria are more favored on alkaline and haline soils. Within a climate zone, the abundance of lichens and mosses in biological soil crusts generally increases with increasing clay and silt content and decreasing sand. Also ...
Soil is made up of a multitude of physical, chemical, and biological entities, with many interactions occurring among them. It is a heterogenous mixture of minerals and organic matter with variations in moisture, temperature and nutrients. Soil supports a wide range of living organisms and is an essential component of terrestrial ecology.
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. [39] 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 ...
Soil biology is the study of microbial and faunal activity and ecology in soil. Soil life , soil biota , soil fauna , or edaphon is a collective term that encompasses all organisms that spend a significant portion of their life cycle within a soil profile, or at the soil- litter interface.
Clay minerals are hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates (e.g. kaolin, Al 2 Si 2 O 5 4), sometimes with variable amounts of iron, magnesium, alkali metals, alkaline earths, and other cations found on or near some planetary surfaces. Clay minerals form in the presence of water [1] and have been important to life, and many theories of abiogenesis ...
A fourth term, loam, is used to describe equal properties of sand, silt, and clay in a soil sample, and lends to the naming of even more classifications, e.g. "clay loam" or "silt loam". Determining soil texture is often aided with the use of a soil texture triangle plot. [5] An example of a soil triangle is found on the right side of the page.
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. [1] Soil type is a technical term of soil classification, the science that deals with the systematic categorization of soils. Every soil of the world belongs to a certain soil type. Soil type is an ...