Soils Illustrated - Field Descriptions – First Edition
Soils Illustrated - Field Descriptions – First Edition, graphically documents field procedures and describes how to fill in a specific soil description form. The soil description form presented and the methods for filling it out are adapted from the Ministry of Environment, 1980, Describing Ecosystems in the Field. Describing Ecosystems in the Field was compiled from the Land Resource Research Institute’s (1978) Manual for Describing Soils in the Field. The following additional works in writing Soils Illustrated - Field Descriptions, were consulted. Land Resource Research Institute, 1982, Manual for describing soils in the field (Revised); Soil Classification Working Group, 1998, The Canadian System of Soil Classification; and Schoeneberger, P.J. et al. 1998, Field book for describing and sampling soils.
Table of Contents
The manual printed on a laser printer by Kent Watson, through International Remotes Sensing Surveys Ltd, on 58 lb double sided glossy water-resistant paper. If the manual gets wet dry the pages and be careful not to tear them, it does take some effort to rip them. The book comes in one inch 8.5 x 5.5 inch three ring binder. There are 259 colour photographs in the 180-page manual that illustrate all the field procedures in describing soils in the field. It also provides additional background information in some areas. Twenty-four sections explain such features as Horizon Designation, Coarse Fragment Description, Soil Texture, Structure, Consistency, Soil Colour, Mottles, Roots, pH, Pores, Clay Films etc. Each section contains the field codes used to fill in the soils description form. Appendix A summarizes these codes for easy access thereby reducing time flipping through pages of text to locate the code tables
Sample Pages and Comments
A coloured bar is at the top of each page. The number on the left is the manual section number. This number corresponds to the column number on the description form. In this example, the header number, 2, matches column 2 Horizon Depth on the description document. The page number is on the right side of the header. The yellow boxes contain a description outlining the contents of the section.
Figure captions are in blue boxes. Table 2.6, in this example, shows column 1 (HORIZON DESIGNATION), and column 2 (HORIZON DEPTH cm). The HORIZON DESIGNATIONS, in yellow, are on the blue bar on the left side of the image. The HORIZON DEPTHS is taken from the rulers on the picture and recorded under column 2. Photographs with rulers on them are to scale. |
Instructions, to perform tasks, are enclosed in pink boxes. The instructions for Wet Consistence instructions are on this page. The photographs display a slightly sticky consistency (Figures 2.126 and 2.127).