Incorporating Anthropogenic Processes in Soil Classification

This chapter considers the need for incorporating anthropogenic processes in soil classification systems, describes fundamental approaches to soil classification and their underlying concepts that affect the incorporation of anthropogenic processes, and proposes possible approaches to incorporating anthropogenic processes in Soil Taxonomy and like systems. Soil classification schemes serve to facilitate communication about soils by organizing the tremendous number of individual soils into groups of soils according to similarity. A problem facing Soil Taxonomy is that soils that may contain garbage, coal ash, or construction debris are grouped with Entisols or Inceptisols, and this results in a loss of credibility in the system. Additionally, wide ranges of properties within classes that include anthropogenic soils result in large numbers of series that are unwieldy when one attempts to correlate series and interpret map units. There are major problems with incorporating anthropogenic processes in systems such as Soil Taxonomy that use morphology-based criteria, because not all anthropogenic soils contain morphological evidence of anthropogenic processes. Three approaches to incorporating anthropogenic processes are proposed for use, singularly or in combination, to minimize impacts on Soil Taxonomy and like systems that rely on morphological criteria for defining classes. Previously unused observations, such as landforms, could be used as criteria for classification; relational observations and data (to include historical records) could be used as criteria for classification; and the knowledge of process of formation could be allowed for use in a single order. These approaches do 58not present a complete solution to the problem, but do provide a means of separating soils in which anthropogenic processes are the primary process of formation.