MAKING A SOIL PROFILE IN AN OIL PALM PLANTATION.
What is a Soil Profile? On the surface, soils look pretty much the same… dirt. The soil profile is where the secrets of the soil and landscape around it are hidden. The soil profile is defined as a vertical section of the soil that is exposed by a soil pit. A soil pit is a hole that is dug from the surface of the soil to the underlying bedrock. Digging of the Profile The Soil Profile Because of the way soils develop, most soil profiles are composed of a series of horizons , or layers of soil stacked on top of one another like layers of a cake. These horizons can tell us a lot about how the soil formed and what was going on around the soil in the past, much like a diary of the landscape. How Does the Soil Profile Develop? Let's pretend we're looking at a brand-new landscape surface. It could be a bed of lava that just cooled, some rocks and minerals exposed by a receding glacier, debris laid down by a flooding river, or many other th...