Soil forming processes

Reading the clues in a soil profile

In the last section, you learned about the five soil-forming factors – climate, organisms, relief, parent material, and time. These factors set the stage. They define the conditions under which a soil develops.

But what actually happens in the soil? If the factors are the background conditions, then soil-forming processes are the actions. They are the transformations that leave visible traces in the soil profile. And this is where things get exciting: if you know what to look for, you can read those traces.

Think of yourself as a soil detective. Every soil profile is a case file. The layers, the colors, the textures – they are clues. The question is not just “What does this soil look like?” but rather: What happened here?