Regional Monitoring of Natural Environment 2004, No 5, 47-94
IDENTIFICATION AND CLASSIFICATION OF TRANSFORMATION ICE LEVELS AND SLOPE SOIL COVERS FORMED IN THE PERIGLACIAL AND EXTRAGLACIAL ENVIRONMENTS
Alojzy Kowalkowski
In Central and Northern Europe there were found 14 parallel belts of glacial, fluvial and Eolian sediments of the age from 500ka to younger ones – from 6ka, which distribution decrease from the South to the North. These belts are marked with recessional moraines and concurrent pre-valleys of the successive Pleistocene Stadials of Scandinavian glaciations. Within every of these belts there are found parallel mosaics of soils with prevailing soils according to the age of a given belt.
The investigation area holds no signs of anthropogenic changes within morphological profiles and profiles of measurable features and characteristics. Most soils of these area have features connected with litho- and pedomorphological activity of diverse in the space-time ice factor in the Pleistocene as well as in cold zones and levels of the Holocene environment.
In the dependence from the energy and the matter of each factors that operated within the soil mosaics, which formed soil landscapes, following dominating actions took place: lithogenic – mother rocks, geomorphological – land surface, climo-genic – climatic, biogenic – assemblages of living organisms and of the man’s origin – anthropogenic.
As far as warm climate is considered the soil development is conditioned by biogenic factors along with a local anthropogenic factor. On the other hand, in cool climatic conditions a prevailing part of climogenic, geomorphogenic and lithologic factors are typical. With an activity of the climogenic factor in cold and boreal climates the zones of periglacial transformations are connected which change, with a decrescent intensity inside of ground, mineral substrata and sediments within lowlands, uplands and mountainous plateaus with a small relief. In mountains, piedmonts and uplands with a significant relief the geomorphological factor has a prevailing meaning. Together with a climatic factor on slopes, it forms series of typical periglacial and degraded soil covers. A lithogenic factor has an impact in every place, where the unaltered rocky substratum or sediments are uncovered or will become exposed. The biogenic factor that develops in time cooperates also with climogenic, geomorphological and lithogenic factors in all soil mosaics, with different changing intensity in time and space. Changes of climate and living organisms assemblages are connected with passing time, what causes that in soil profiles polygenetic, monogenetic, relict and present levels are found.
The detailed classification of morphopedogenetic transformations with diagnostic levels in terrestric soils are presented in Tables 4 and 6. Characterizations of zones of transformations and soil covers, taking into account the name, thickness, structure, lithology, granulation, relation to covers in the floor and in the ceiling, other concurrent features and diagnostic levels are presented in Tables 10 and 11.
