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"Soil is a loose surface formation, a kind of pathologic condition of the native rock." Richthoffen (transl. by Joffe, 1949).
It has long
been recognised that parent material has a major influence on the physical and
chemical properties of soils. It is one of the five traditionally accepted
factors of soil formation, the others being climate, topography, organic
material and time (Gray and Murphy 2002). Several definitions and perceptions
about soil parent material exist. In general, parent material is the initial
state of soil formation (Jenny 1941). Parent material is considered to provide the primary
raw material upon which the other influencing factors will serve to modify
(Gray and Murphy 2002). For soil mapping purposes it is defined as the material
from which soil has presumably derived (FAO 2006). It can be said
that if some soil properties of different parent materials under certain
climatic, vegetative and topographic conditions are known then one can predict
soil characteristics in other remote areas by looking only types of parent
material (Gökbulak and Özcan, 2008).
References
FAO
2006. Guidelines for soil description. FAO, Rome, Italy.
Gökbulak, F.,
Özcan, M., 2008. Hydro-physical properties of soils developed from different
parent materials. Geoderma, 145: 376-380.
Gray,
J. and
Murphy, B., 2002. Parent material and world soil distribution. 17th
WCSS, Bangkok,
Thailand.
Jenny, H.,
1941. Factors of soil formation. A system of quantitative pedology.
Mcgraw-Hill,
New York.
Joffe, J.S., 1949. Pedology. Pedology Publications, New Brunswick, N.Y, 622p.
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