USA soil taxonomy - Definition and Overview

Soil taxonomy provided by United States Department of Agriculture / Natural Resources Conservation Centre provides an elaborate classification of soil types according to several parameters and in several levels: Order, Suborder, Great Group, Subgroup, Family, and Series.

Example of classification of a soil type

Order: Entisols,

Suborder: Fluvents,

Great Group: Torrifluvents,

Subgroup: Typic Torrifluvents,

Family: Fine-loamy, mixed, superactive, calcareous, mesic,

Series: Jocity, Youngston.

Orders

• Alfisols
• Andisols
• Aridisols
• Entisols
• Gelisols
• Histosols
• Inceptisols
• Mollisols
• Oxisols
• Spodosols
• Ultisols
• Vertisols

Related articles

• FAO soil classification
• International Committee on Anthropogenic Soils (ICOMANTH)
• Soil classification

External links

• USDoA / NRCC soil taxonomy webpage (http://soils.usda.gov/technical/classification/taxonomy/)
• Soil taxonomy document (ftp://ftp-fc.sc.egov.usda.gov/NSSC/Soil_Taxonomy/tax.pdf)
• A Compendium of On-Line Soil Survey Information (http://www.itc.nl/~rossiter/research/rsrch_ss_class.html)

Example Usage of taxonomy