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But just what do we mean by "soil"?

A precise definition is elusive, for what we commonly call soil is anything but a homogeneous entity. It is in fact an exceedingly variable body with a wide range of attributes. Perhaps the best we can do at the outset is to define soil as the fragmented outer layer of the Earth's terrestrial surface in which the living roots of plants can obtain anchorage and suste- nance, alongside a thriving biotic community of microscopic and macroscopic organisms.

The recognizably different types of soil are legion, reflecting the enormous heterogeneity of such determining factors as bedrock composition, landscape (slope), climate, vegetation, and the length of time the soil-forming process have been at work. Specialists who call themselves pedologists are fond of endlessly reclassifying soils into more and more types, to which they apply strange-sounding names.

Daniel Hillel: Out of the Earth, Univer- sity of California Press, Berkeley, 1991.

Bedlands National Park

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