These are the classic, red and yellow soils of the humid tropics. The name derives from L. ferrum, iron, and alumen, alum indicative of the iron and aluminum rich mineralogy of Ferralsols.
Definition
Soils
- 1.
having a ferralic horizon at some depth between 25 and 200 cm from the soil surface, and
- 2.
lacking a nitic horizon within 100 cm from the soil surface, and
- 3.
lacking an argic horizon that has 10% or more water‐dispersible clay within 30 cm from its upper boundary unless the soil material has geric properties or contains more than 1.4% organic carbon.
General characteristics
Ferralsols are highly weathered soils, strongly to extremely leached, with a clay mineralogy essentially made up of kaolinite and Fe and Al oxides. They are deep to very deep soils. The depth of these soils can vary from 1 to 20 m and the most common depths of the solum (A + B) vary from 3 to 10 m. The soils are very homogeneous in color, texture, structure and mineralogy along the profile, being difficult to...
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Buol, S.W., and Eswaran, H., 2000. Oxisols. Adv. Agron., 68: 151–195.
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.
Muggler, C.C., 1998. Polygenetic oxisols on tertiary surfaces, Minas Gerais. PhD Thesis. Brazil: Soil Genesis and Landscape Development, Wageningen Agricultural University.
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Paz, C.G., Rodríguez, T.T., Behan‐Pelletier, V.M., Hill, S.B., Vidal‐Torrado, P., Cooper, M. (2008). Ferralsols. 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_216
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