File:USDA Soil Texture.svg - Wikimedia Commons
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I was surprised we don’t have the soil triangle as an emoji. I don’t know why I expected we would, but now it feels like it’s missing.

      • happybadger [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        7·
        9 months ago

        It’s one of those things I can point to as a digital luddite and say “retvrn to tradition”. Does the job as well as a 2025 website, none of the bullshit from a 2025 website. It’s to geological surveys as the fediverse is to social media.

    • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      9·
      9 months ago

      soil texture and organic matter content have slight overlap, generally characterized as “loam” in texture descriptions. a soil with good organic matter content would be in the “loam” area.

      soil, by volume is ~50% mineral-matter the rest being pore space for either air or water. of that 50%, just 5% of the total volume is generally organic matter. there are soil types that are higher, but they are like wetlands and swampy stuff like that, where condititons are anerobic and organic matter builds up. but that little 5% of organic has dramatic impacts on soil characteristics.

      generally, though the 45% is what mostly determines the texture, which is some combination of sand, silt, and clay (organized from largest to smallest particle size). mostly texture dictates how water behaves. sandy soils drain faster, clay soils hold onto water more tightly.

      silty-loam, sandy-clay, clayey-silt are all examples of terminology for describing a soil texture. this is the dominant methology for soil science in the US. at one point i was researching a move to somewhere in scotland and they have a different classification system that uses numbering, and i was in the process of trying to connect the dots. all that to say, soil characterization can be quite different in different parts of the world.

      i think a lot of places use the triangle though.

      • NephewAlphaBravo [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        silty-loam, sandy-clay, clayey-silt are all examples of terminology for describing a soil texture. this is the dominant methology for soil science in the US.

        i don’t know why this line is cracking me up so much, the kinda goofy names and the matter-of-fact second statement. imagining a biologist going “well technically speaking it’s a catty-weasel screm3”

        • came_apart_at_Kmart [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
          0·
          9 months ago

          there are so many possible configurations, they sort of have to jumble words. like if there was a series of tremors that rolled millions of cats into a millions of weasle colonies, and 10 novel combinations of mammal emerged along a gradient, it’s easy to just mash the words based on ratios and call it a day. especially with soil formation, this blending has probably happened in 50 different ways within 5 miles of wherever you are.

          also, the texture classification is a small (but crucial) part of the broader taxonomy, which is like the linnaean system for species. the “silty loam” is really just a last specific bit of a soil’s full classification, which is also specific to a depth (aka horizon). a lot of the other parts are about factors affecting its formation. the full name/classification of a specific soil looks like:

          Order, Suborder, Great Group, Subgroup, family, Series

          so the “silty loam” is like only part of the series section. below is a list of full soil classifications (the second column). they usually list things backwards (from series -> order).

          a decade plus after classes, i remember off the cuff like maybe 3-4 soil orders (out of 12) and a few terms outside of textural classifications, but they indicate things like moisture regime, parent material, biota, how “weathered” they are… so if you have all the terms memorized (like i may have, once, for an exam) and see the name, you would be able to articulate a lot about the place… it’s climate, its plant life, how prone it is to flooding, its historical context (is it an old stream bed, did it used to be something else, like a coastline or an eroded rock formation, etc).

          it’s a crazy system.