Pedology was born in the 18th and 19th centuries, when soil was first conceived as a natural body worthy of its own scientific investigation. For well over a century, pedology explored soil as a system developed from a complex of natural processes. By the mid-20th century, however, human activities began to affect substantial global soil changes with influence on the dynamics of the Earth’s env...

The classification of soils originated from three main sources: from early empirical soil surveys, from folk soil classifications and from scientific theory of pedology. The first soil classifications reflected their origin in different extent, and still remain certain features of their initial sources. The actual situation in soil classification is discouraging, mainly due to the diversity of ...

Soil science is a relatively new discipline which has mainly developed since the 1880s. It uses terms, methods and processes borrowed from other basic disciplines like climatology, geology, chemistry, physics and biology, but with a direct application to soils. At present, it is difficult to speak about one single science but as soil sciences, as they cover several fields including: pedology (o...

Listeria monocytogenes is a food-borne pathogen responsible for the potentially fatal disease listeriosis and terrestrial ecosystems have been hypothesized to be its natural reservoir. Therefore, identifying the key edaphic factors that influence its survival in soil is critical. We measured the survival of L. monocytogenes in a set of 100 soil samples belonging to the French Soil Quality Monit...

A fundamental problem that agro-environmental sciences have to face today is the lack of interdisciplinary linkages between the various disciplines dealing with agriculture and environment and the physics of the “soil medium” organization, which is the object of study of the pedology. Currently, the soil medium is far from being considered as the organized physical medium providing the physical...

1 Institute for Environmental Analytical Chemistry, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany * now at: Soil Geography/Pedology, Department of Geography, University of Cologne, Germany Received: 26 February 2008 – Accepted: 26 February 2008 – Published: 4 April 2008 Correspondence to: L. Duester ([email protected]) Published by Copernicus Publications on behalf of the European Geosciences U...

Taxonomic categories of the highest level (e.g. the RSG of the World Reference Base for soil resources) are not adequate when dealing with trace element concentrations in soils. This does not however mean that pedology, its basic concepts and knowledge accumulated over more than a century, are of no use in this domain. Examples of the role of soil forming processes on trace element contents in ...

Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 76:766–778 doi:10.2136/sssaj2011.0407 Received 28 Nov. 2011. *Corresponding author ([email protected]). © Soil Science Society of America, 5585 Guilford Rd., Madison WI 53711 USA All rights reserved. No part of this periodical may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storag...