Planosols have bleached, light‐colored, eluviated surface horizons that show signs of periodic water‐logging on account of the immediate subsoil being significantly more clay‐rich and hence less permeable, and abruptly overlie dense, slowly permeable subsoil with significantly more clay than the surface horizon. This article is based on the descriptions in FAO (2001).
Connotation. Soils with a degraded, eluvial surface horizon abruptly over dense subsoil, typically in seasonally waterlogged flat lands; from L. planus, flat.
Synonyms. Formerly Planosols were labeled ‘pseudogley soils’. The USDA first used the name planosol in 1938, but in Soil Taxonomy the current USDA usage is to include most of the original planosols in the Great Soil Groups of the albaqualfs, albaquults and argialbolls. In most soil classification systems the term planosol is used.
Definition. Planosols are soils with
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an eluvial horizon of loamy sand or coarser texture, with a lower boundary (no deeper than within...
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Bibliography
Brinkman, R. 1970. Ferrolysis, a hydromorphic soil forming process. Geoderma 3: 199–206.
FAO, 2001. Lecture notes on the major soils of the world. World Soil Resources Reports, 94. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 334 pp.
FitzPatrick, E.A., 1986. An Introduction to Soil Science. 2nd edn. Essex, England/New York: Longman Scientific & Technical/Wiley, 255 pp.
Zech, W., and Hintermaier‐Erhard, G., 2007. Soils of the World. Heidelberg, Berlin: Springer-Verlag. 130 pp.
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Blake, G.R. et al. (2008). Planosols. In: Chesworth, W. (eds) Encyclopedia of Soil Science. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-3995-9_440
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