Principal soil types:
Following are some of the principal soil types:
- Loam.
- Silt.
- Mud.
- Caliche.
- Marl.
- Hardpan.
- Peat.
- Clays.
- Drift.
- Shale.
- Black cotton soils.
Loam:
This type of soil contains silt, sand and clay some with organic material and some time without organic material. As from its ingredients it is easy to see that there are sandy loams, silty loams, and the clayey loams. These are good for the growth of a plant. It is one of the principal soil types.
Silts:
It is a light grey to pink colored fined grained rock flour found in borrow pits. In some rivers specially which are close to deltas, we find deep deposits of organic slits which are some times 30 meter thick and some times more then it, due to which unpleasant smell of methane gas is usually encountered. The color of these slits is dark in rivers and light grey when dry.
Mud:
Mud is actually a combination of soil and organic admixtures. It is a shinning pasty mixture.
Caliche:
Caliche is a mixture of sand, clay, and gravel. In it calcium carbonate is used as the cementing material which is deposited through evaporation.
Marl:
Clay with calcareous material is called as marl. It is more homogeneous than caliche.
Hardpan:
A mixture of clay, sand, gravel and boulders under highly compressed cemented state is called hardpan. It is usually found ion the top of the rock ledge.
Peat:
The dead remaining of the plants and animals partially decayed are called peat. It shoes a fibrous texture. The totally decayed dead remaining of the plants and animals is known as muck. And the soils that contain these contents is called as organic soil.
Drift:
The superficial unconsolidated deposits of the recent origins such as wind blow sand, alluvium, and glacial moraine are described as the superficial deposits of recent origin.
The above described types are principal soil types of soil.
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