GENESIS AND MORPHOLOGY OF SOME ALPINE PODZOL PROFILES

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Abstract
Summary: Some representative podzol profiles from an Alpine region are described. Their genesis is mainly a function of vegetation and drainage and is analysed by morphological, chemical, and mineralogical methods. The effect of soil management on profile development as governed by recent economic advances has been discussed. When meadows with brown soils that are preserved by careful management are abandoned, heather and bilberries start growing and podzolization processes begin. Illuviation horizons are formed that have a friable consistency when formed in these meadows, but that may be hard and brittle when developed in sandy till with only heather or bilberries. Soil physical processes lead only to a fragmentation of parent rock, whereas pronounced chemical weathering occurring in these soils—decreasing in intensity with depth—produces an active clay fraction, the composition of which is discussed. Chemical weathering was most pronounced under poor vegetation. The higher content of silt in the topsoil can be partly attributed to sedimentation of wind‐blown particles. Frost action leads to sedimentation of fine soil particles on top of larger mineral fragments lying at some depth in a profile.

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