Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
14
Chernozems; General
Conclusions
Many other soils will remain to be studied. However, the poorly
differentiated young-looking soils, for example, Regosols, Leptosols,
Fluvisols or even Umbrisols, raise fewer questions on genesis and
are, therefore, conceptually less interesting than the rest. This means
that we could comprehend the broad lines of their evolution without
devoting specific chapters to them. For Cryosols of the Arctic regions,
many aspects remain to be discovered, so that the time has not come, at
least for the author of this topic, to present their genesis. The Chernozem
can also give rise to a simplified presentation. Also, the Americans
have not deigned to individualize it in their Soil Taxonomy. But it is a
well-known soil and most classifications make reference to it. In Europe,
it is the fourth soil group by area (Ibáñez
et al
. 2009). Furthermore, it
will enable us to revisit climatic zonality of soils, which is at the core of
pedogenesis and by which we have begun as well as we will end this
topic, before a few words in conclusion.
14.1 THECHERNOZEM
The term comes from
chern
(black, in Russian) and
zemlja
(land or
region, in the same language). Chernozem (WRB), alias Tchernozem or
Tchernoziom, is very famous. Firstly, the English gave it great publicity
when one of them declared on his return from Russia '
The Tchernozem
is to Russia what coal is to England
' (Boulaine 2006). Then, it was while
studying this soil for his thesis that the father of pedology, Vassiliyevitch
Dokuchaev, discovered the fundamentals of pedogenesis. When he went
to Paris on the occasion of the World Fair of 1900, this person took care to
take along with him a six-cubic-metre block of Chernozem. This sample
