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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 cause ...
Chalk is a soft, white, porous, sedimentary carbonate rock.It is a form of limestone composed of the mineral calcite and originally formed deep under the sea by the compression of microscopic plankton that had settled to the sea floor.
Many of Earth's landforms and landscapes are the result of weathering, erosion and redeposition. Weathering is a crucial part of the rock cycle; sedimentary rock, the product of weathered rock, covers 66% of the Earth's continents and much of the ocean floor. [4]
In soils, clay is a soil textural class and is defined in a physical sense as any mineral particle less than 2 μm (8 × 10 −5 in) in effective diameter. Many soil minerals, such as gypsum , carbonates, or quartz, are small enough to be classified as clay based on their physical size, but chemically they do not afford the same utility as do ...
Residuum is weathered rock that is not transported by erosion, contributing in time to the formation of soil.It is distinguished from other types of parent material in that it is composed solely of mineral, not organic, material, and it remains in place rather than being moved by the action of wind, water, or gravity.
Sediments containing more clay tend to be more resistant to erosion than those with sand or silt, because the clay helps bind soil particles together. [45] Soil containing high levels of organic materials are often more resistant to erosion, because the organic materials coagulate soil colloids and create a stronger, more stable soil structure ...
"Drift" geology is often more important than "solid" geology when considering building works, drainage, siting water boreholes, soil fertility, and many other issues. Glaciation and the resulting glacial and fluvio-glacial deposition has had a major impact on the landscape of England covering many areas with a veneer of glacial till in the ...
This concretionary cement often makes the concretion harder and more resistant to weathering than the host stratum. There is an important distinction to draw between concretions and nodules . Concretions are formed from mineral precipitation around some kind of nucleus while a nodule is a replacement body.