Pedogenetic Trends in Soils Formed in Technogenic Parent Materials

Abstract

Soils formed in technogenic parent materials are proliferating and their pedogenesis remains inadequately understood. Upon investigation of soils formed in various technogenic materials reported in the literature and of a Technosol developing on iron industry deposits, potential specificities of pedogenesis within technogenic materials are discussed. Analyses have shown that pedogenetic processes observed in these soils are similar to those occurring in natural soils. However, some particularities have been highlighted, such as the coexistence of processes rarely encountered simultaneously in natural environments or high rates of soil development during the first stages of weathering. Technogenic materials display highly diverse constituents, wide spatial variability, and temporal discontinuities as a result of human activities. These inherent features, in interaction with other soil-forming factors, may govern the pedogenesis by generating the following conditions: i) a high diversity of pedogenetic processes, including processes occurring usually in dissimilar climatic regions, ii) localized processes and distinct rates and orientations of soil development over short distance and iii) a succession and/or a superimposition of processes, constrained by the deposition of materials and human operations. This creates the potential for the simultaneity of processes coexisting rarely in natural soils developing in the same climatic region. These soils are likely to have a polycylic evolution and to evolve towards groups of soils other than Technosols, depending on the dominant processes. Further investigations of the processes and their potential interactions occurring in a larger range of soils formed in technogenic materials are required to better predict the evolution of these soils.

Urban soil resources of medium-sized cities in Poland: a comparative case study of Toruń and Zielona Góra

“…Their presence significantly modifies the morphology of soils and their properties. Furthermore, this may be a factor explicitly determining the direction of the soil-forming processes and the evolution of soils (Capra et al 2015;Greinert 2015a;Huot et al 2015). The materials of technogenic origin, such as construction debris, slag, dust, rock material, lignite, coal, municipal waste and sludge, are currently considered parent materials for Technosols (IUSS Working Group WRB 2015).…”

“…From the very beginning, a great deal of attention was paid to the issues of the methodology and research techniques (Ge et al 2000;Sandroni et al 2003;Davidson et al 2006;Cheng et al 2011;Rząsa and Owczarzak 2013;Vereecken 2016) and anthropogenic soil classification (Effland and Pouyat 1997;Rossiter 2007;Charzyński et al 2013a). As time passed by, the issues related to Technosols pedogenesis (Lefort et al 2006;Monserié et al 2009;Scalenghe and Ferraris 2009;Séré et al 2010), soils vs. city management and landscape planning (Verheye 1996;Brown et al 2000;Herrick 2000;Jim 2001;Hanks and Lewandowski 2003;Chen 2007;Vrščaj et al 2008;Schindelbeck et al 2008), man-made materials, their features and qualities as soils and parent materials (Pey, Burghardt 1996;El Khalil et al 2008;Nehls et al 2013;Huot et al 2015), soils and the urban ecology (Bullock and Gregory 1991;Bartsch et al 1997;Chronopoulos et al 1997;Jim 1998Jim , 2001Rusakov and Novikov 2003;Bastida et al 2008;Scalenghe and Ajmone Marsan 2009;Bartens et al 2010;Pataki 2015) and legal regulations and strategies (Verheye 1996;Huinink 1998;Karlen et al 2003;…”

Revealing Tropical Technosols as an Alternative for Mine Reclamation and Waste Management

“…Even though the technogenic parent materials may be diverse, the processes occurring in these soils may resemble those observed in natural soils [31]. When the parental artefacts are prone to alteration, an incipient topsoil can be developed in less than 50 years [32][33][34].…”

Geochemical Assessment of Trace Metals in Peri-Urban Drainage and Bioaccumulation in Selected Food Crops in the Kumasi Metropolis, Ghana

“…Weathering of rocks often mobilizes elements which, when exposed to agents of erosion are transported and re-distributed in the environment (Khirbash & Semhi, 2015). Trace elements distribution in soils depends on the nature of parent material, weathering processes, human activity and climatic conditions (Rezapour, Golmohammad, & Ramezanpour, 2014;Huot, Simonnot, & Morel, 2015). Metals such as As, Pd and Cd can be highly toxic and exhibit complex behaviours and can enter the food chain; exposure of the elevated levels of trace metals in the environment can pose threat to health and life (Xie, Peng, Wang, & Chen, 2017;Hu, Jia, Hu, Xu, Xia, & Li, 2017).…”