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Soil Characteristics

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Definitions

1. What is inorganic material?
2. What is physical weathering?
3. What is chemical weathering?
4. What is organic material?
5. What is soil texture?
6. What is soil structure?
7. What is a ped?
8. What is the infiltration rate?
9. What is the infiltration capacity?
10. What is gravity water?
11. What is capillary water?
12. What is hygroscopic water?
13. What is available water capacity?
14. What is field capacity?
15. What is the wilting point?
16. What is litter?
17. What is humus?
18. What is a cation?

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Content

1. What factors or processes might cause the relative proportion of soil ingredients to vary from place to place?
2. How is physical weathering different from chemical weathering?
3. What climatic characteristics tend to promote high rates of weathering? Why?
4. What climatic characteristics tend to inhibit weathering?
5. How is soil texture related to soil moisture? Why are they related in this way?
6. Why is soil texture important?
7. How is soil organic content related to soil moisture? Why?
8. What is the difference between infiltration rate and infiltration capacity?
9. What soil structures should have high infiltration capacities, and which should have low infiltration capacities? Why?
10. Which is more important to plants, gravity water, capillary water or hygroscopic water? Why?
11. How is field capacity related to soil texture?
12. What soil textures have the highest available water capacity? Why?
13. What soil textures have the lowest available water capacity? Why?
14. In what region of the United States is the available water capacity of soils highest? lowest?
15. In what region of the United States is soil organic content highest? lowest?
16. Why is the cation exchange capacity of a soil important?
17. What is the acidity of humid climate soils like compared to arid climate soils?