Soil formation
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Soil formation, also known as pedogenesis, is the process of soil genesis as regulated by the effects of place, environment, and history. Biogeochemical processes act to both create and destroy order
Soil created on a no-till farm in South Dakota, United States
Soil, on an agricultural field in Germany, which has formed on loess parent material
Five factors of soil formation
Soil carbon
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Soil carbon is the solid carbon stored in global soils. This includes both soil organic matter, derived from plant, animal, and microbial tissues, and inorganic carbon as carbonate minerals. Soil carb
Global Carbon Cycle
Soil carbon cycle through the microbial loop Carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is fixed by plants (or autotrophic microorganisms) and added to soil through processes such as (1) root exudation of low-molecular weight simple carbon compounds, or deposition of leaf and root litter leading to accumulation of complex plant polysaccharides. (2) Through these processes, carbon is made bioavailable to the microbial metabolic "factory" and subsequently is either (3) respired to the atmosphere or (4) enters the stable carbon pool as microbial necromass. The exact balance of carbon efflux versus persistence is a function of several factors, including aboveground plant community composition and root exudate profiles, environmental variables, and collective microbial phenotypes (i.e., the metaphenome).
A portable soil respiration system measuring soil CO2 flux