Calcisols and other Soils on Carbonate-Bearing and Sulphate-Bearing Materials - Major Soil Groups of the World - page 230

Fig. 7.17 Haplic Calcisol (WRB) with accumulation of calcium carbonate at depth, Tunisia
(white spots = calcic horizon). Photo : author.

In humid climate, most soils overlying hard limestone at shallow depth
are of the A/R type and humus-rich. Sometimes acidified in the surface
layer (pH below 4.5), they are base-saturated in the bottom layer with pH
close to neutrality. Old German authors termed this particular material
tangel (Fig. 7.18). The corresponding soils are abundant in limestone
mountains (Bottner 1971).

Humic and Eutric Leptosol on hard limestone

There is no clear distinction between soils on limestone and those on
dolomite, CaMg ( CO 3 ) 2 , because the latter contains as much calcium as
magnesium. The WRB is hardly concerned with these soils. It proposes
the qualifier 'Magnesic', mentioned only in the case of Solonetz, which
is not enough! The soils on dolomite abundant in some Mediterranean
countries are poor soils, shallow, broken up by outcrops, sandy, 'dried'
and chemically poor.

Soils on dolomite