Field Experience in Soil Inventory Methods (Treehaven)

NRES 360

Till

unsorted parent material encompassing clay to boulders

Drumlins

elongated mounds of debris molded by ice passing over them (orientations indicate the direction of ice movement)

Outwash

sorted sand and gravel parent material deposited by glaciers (meltwater), leaving thick/non-uniform layers

Kame

isolated glacial geology formed from waterfall flowing over ice and through crevasse, depositing sorted gravel material

Kettle

chunk of ice from glacier melted and left depression on the landscape

Lacustrine

lake deposit that is sorted, fine-textured, and has thin layers

Moraine

glacier pushed material

Esker

snake-shaped hill of gravel, formed by “river” under ice

Erratic

boulders riding along in glacier were deposited erratically

Drumlin

elongated, stretched, tear drop-shaped hills of till (unsorted) facing the same direction in a group

Entisols

Soils that have little or no development of pedogenic horizons

• Thin A, E, or peaty horizons

• Alluvial soils

• Steep soils

• Eroding dune sands

• Sandy soils with a weak A and a “color" B”

  • Simple wetland soils

Aquents (Entisols)

Wet entisols

• Gray and mottled

• Very thin A horizon

• May be brown

Fluvents (Entisols)

Not usually wet and are not sands

• Soils developing in stratified stream deposits (alluvium)

• May be periodically flooded

Psamments (Entisols)

Formed in well-drained, sorted sands

Inceptisols