Factors of soil formation in soil classification systems

Abstract

The development of soil classification systems in Russia has been accompanied by certain changes in the attitude toward the factors of soil formation as criteria for separating soil units at the high taxonomic levels. The works of N.N. Rozov supported the traditional priority of the bioclimatic approach to the separation of soil types and subtypes in the classification systems of 1967 and 1977. In the new classification of Russian soils, the factors of soil formation are taken into account in a “hidden” form, through the diagnostic horizons and features reflecting the facial and zonal changes in the character of the pedogenesis and through the separation of several high-level soil taxa developing under specific combinations of lithological and geomorphic conditions. Ecological matrices illustrating the position of the soil types distinguished on the basis of substantive criteria in the field of soil-forming factors are included in the latest version of the new Russian soil classification system. The idea of these matrices fully corresponds to the logic of the factor-genetic soil classification system developed in the works of N.N. Rozov.