Soil Patterns In The Landscape - Soil Sampling in the Fettercairn Area 1

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Soils Land And The Environment

Practical – Soil Patterns In The Landscape

Exercise 2 – Soil Sampling in the Fettercairn Area 1

Points C and D

        This exercise aims to examine four contrasting sites in the Fettercairn area. Each of the site localities will be identified eg. Land use, parent soil type, local topography etc, and then cross-referenced to the soil profile.

The four sites chosen are listed as follows:

Point E F and G

Site 1

The first site, Hunters Hill is a woodland area, located on the top of a hill elevated at 125 – 240 meters above sea level. This altitude means that the soils microclimate will be much cooler than the other lowland sites and so will receive less weathering, mainly by chemical and biological means, of parent material. There will be increased moisture content due to the extra rainfall this area will receive and mist (due to the potential for dew point to be reached at such altitudes). This site is very likely not to receive up-welling water from the ground water reserves due to its sheer distance from it and so it is not a gleyed soil.  

Also through-flow movements downslope will be much higher here, resulting in an enhanced rate of lateral translocation of solutes and suspended material, again giving a possible reason for the soil profile’s colour.

The dense woodland of Scott’s pine trees curb wind velocities, slowing air movements raising air masses and intensifying upward wind currents and so increase the condensation of water vapour, creating ideal moist conditions for soil bacteria such as decomposers and nitrogen-fixing bacterium, that could produce acidic excrement which could weather rock fragments present in the soil. However as there is little variation in the prevalent species of fauna, i.e. pine trees, it will take the decomposes many years before they can act on the fallen leaf litter, giving the soil the essential nutrients it needs as these pine needles take years to break down.

The soil profile is also deprived from much stored water as it is freely drained, especially due to the extensive network of root channels and those made by earth worms and other soil fauna associated with such a densely vegetated area. There is also a very high and well-established upper canopy layer and so direct isolation levels are much lower and scattered radiation much higher. This will increase air temperatures, as plants and other fauna release heat into the atmosphere, favouring once again conditions for soil bacterium to establish, replenishing the soil with nutrients, present in the lower layers of the soil profile - B horizon. So the altered site conditions by the vegetation to the sites microclimate increases the likelihood of soil bacteria colonising in the O layer, therefore increasing the amount of humic acid present in the soil, and therefore increasing the weathering process of chelation. Whereby the ‘removal of metal ions, in particular from Aluminium, Iron and Manganese, from solids by binding with such organic acids,’ forming organic matter-metal complexes. The chelation agents are simply the decomposition products of plants and can be seen in the B horizon with a reddish brown sandy loam. (Not the A horizon due to increased through-flow and root canals in that layer.)

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TALK ABOUT PARENT MATERAILS n SAPROLITE AND SAPROCK!!!!!!!!!!

The parent material is predominantly a coarse-textured drift derived mainly from sandstone with acid igneous and metamorphic rocks and so

Blah blah blah balh blah

The land use potential of this site is obviously forestry as it is a coniferous plantation and does not really hold the potential for mass >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Site 2

        The second site is a lowland site that is situated South West of the Mill of Kincardine on the flood plain of a river, a local drainage ditch.

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