Podzolic-brown soils of the Far East on the Soil map of Russian Federation, scale 1 : 2.5 M, and their correlation with soils in the Russian soil classification

Abstract

Podzolic-brown forest soils on the Soil Map of Russian Federation, scale 1 : 2.5 M, are widespread on the plains and plateaus of the Far East, referred to the Eastern brown-forest-soil area in the scheme of soil-geographical zoning. There, in Primorye and Priamurye regions, they are confined to various parent rocks and to different climatic and biota conditions. In the Classification of Soils of Russia (2004, 2008), there are no direct analogues of podzolic-brown soils in the map legend. To name these soils in the Russian classification system, regional publications (N.A. Kreida, G.I. Ivanov, V.I. Roslikova et al., N.M. Kostenkov, E.A. Zharikova) were reviewed: morphological and physicochemical properties of podzolic-brown soils were assessed in terms of their compliance with the diagnostic criteria of their possible analogues in the Russian system. The comparison has shown that in Primorye, on stony-loamy-clayey derivates of hard rocks, podzolic-brown soils correspond to soddy-pale-eluvial-metamorphic soils with textural differentiation, on loamy-clayey lacustrine-alluvial and colluvial deposits – as dark-humus podbels. In the north, in Priamurye region, podzolic-brown gley soils have properties of both texture-differentiated soils with the BT diagnostic horizon and of soils with a specific cryogenic structure in the middle cryometamorphic horizon. In the ideology and nomenclature of the Russian classification system, the former are defined as mucky-podzolic gleyic soils, the latter soils, as depending on the intensity of surface gley and structure development, can be defined as cryometamorphic podzolized gleyzems, eluvial-metamorphic cryometamorphic gleyic soils, or gleyic svetlozems.