Humusica 2, article 14: Anthropogenic soils and humus systems - Comparing classification systems

The aim of this article is to present a sort of state of the art from a soil classification point of view. How far are soils from their original natural state? A few years ago, the two most important soil classification systems added a classification of anthropogenic soils. Even so, although the concept of anthropogenic soil differs slightly in the two systems, it is easy to recognize these soils all around us, in both urban and agricultural contexts. After presenting the main types of anthropogenic soils, using WRB or Soil Taxonomy characteristics, we will focus on anthropogenic humipedons, presenting a table where they are subdivided into two new units called Agro (natural topsoils used for agricultural purposes) and Techno (human-made humus systems). This allows to conceptually compare soil and humipedon classifications, and prepares the field for further investigations on Agro (Humusica 2, article 15) and Techno (Humusica 2, article 16) humipedons. * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (A. Zanella), [email protected] (P. Schad), [email protected] (J. Galbraith), [email protected] (J.-F. Ponge).