Categories of Soil

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Recommended: Essay on types of soil with characteristics and uses

Soil covers much of the land on Earth. Soils are used to plant trees as well as a foundation in building houses and skyscrapers. Basically, soil is defined as zone of the Earth’s crust that biologically active, which made up of minerals, organic material, water and air (Richter & Markewitz, 2010). It is very important element in the environment as it provides critical ecosystem services for life (Brady & Weil, 2008). In general, soils are classified into two major categories which are sedentary soils and transported soils. (refer to Figure 1 in Appendix 1).
The first type of soil is sedentary soils. These soils are also known as the residual soil, which occur on top of parent rock. In other word, the soils still remain on the rock where it is originally formed. The residues left are due to weathering process and transportation, which contain insoluble products of rock weathering. Chemical composition of residual soils is the same as the parent rocks which rich in humus. Besides that, landslides and soil erosions occur due to rainfall is commonly happened in residual soils area (Rahardjo et al., 2005). Arthur (2010) pointed out that landslides and soil erosions occur because residual soils crumble easily and break down rapidly. Laterite is one of the examples of residual soils and the end product of very long weathering process. Laterites consist of hard granules formed by cementing action. It is hardened due to exposure of air which leads to formation of hydrated iron oxides. Nevertheless, laterite is easy to dig up and possesses deep brown soil of cellular structure. Cementing agents made up of iron and aluminium oxides whereby it ranges from sandy clays to gravel. It functions as road sub-bases or foundation. In order to identi...

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..., H., Lim, T. T., Chang, M. F., & Fredlund, D. G. (2005). Response of a residual soil slope to rainfall. Canadian Geotechnical Journal, 42(2), 340-351.
Richter, D., & Markewitz, D. (2010). How deep is the soil. American Institute of
Biological Sciences: Oxford University Press.
Robert, L. C., & Jack, M. (1955). Soil development in relation to vegetation and surface age at glacier bay, Alaska. Journal of Ecology, 43(2), 11-14.
Wesley, L. (2009). Behaviour and geotechnical properties of residual soils and allophone clays. Obras y Proyectos, 6, 5-10.
White, B. R. (2012). Soil transports by winds on Mars. Geophysical Research, 84(9), 6-
11.
Zhang, X., Liu, J., & Lan, C. (2010). The prospect on dynamic characteristics of aeolian soils. Progress in Informatics and Computing (PIC), 1, 49-53.

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