Mineralogical and Chemical Characteristics of Four Western Kansas Soils

Abstract

Varied geologic materials, climatic conditions, topography, and native vegetation have produced a wide range in the physical and chemical properties of Kansas soils. Physically, the soils range from light-colored pervious sands to dark-colored slowly permeable clays. Chemically, they vary from the highly weathered, acid soils of the east to the neutral to alkaline and often calcareous soils in the west. Mineralogically, our knowledge is less complete. Only recently, with the development, acquisition, and use of x-ray and electron microscope equipment, and with the progress of the Kansas soil survey, has it been possible to analyze accurately the mineralogical composition of known soils. Swineford and Frye (14) in 1951 analyzed the mineralogical composition of Kansas surficial materials. They found that the silt-size fraction of the loessial deposits (parent material of soils) of western and northern Kansas contained quartz, feldspars, volcanic-ash shards, carbonates, and micas, with quartz making up more than half the volume. The clay fraction consisted of montmorillonite, illite, calcite, quartz, and feldspar, with a trace of kaolinite mineral. They attributed the presence of montomorillonite to the weathering of volcanic glass, commonly present in western Kansas loess whose source was the sediments of the Platt River, and northeast Kansas loess whose source was Missouri River sediments. Although they recognized a decrease in particle size with distance from the source this was not correlated with mineralogical composition. Hanna and Bidwell (6) confirmed their hypothesis regarding the source of the northeast Kansas loess, and in addition demonstrated a relationship between the soil profile particle size and distance from the Missouri River valley. Badgley (2) found the Peorian and Loveland loess of Decatur, Norton, Phillips, Smith, Jewell, and Republic Counties to contain an abundance of montmorillonitic type clay with the additional presence of interstratified clays in the more clayey buried paleosols, which he attributed to the deposition of potassium leached from the overlying loess.