ABSTRACT
Soil science and taxonomy, as we know them today, are little more than a century old. Prior to the late 1800s, soils were considered a surface mantle of loose and weathered rock.[4] V.V. Dokuchaiev, a Russian geologist working mostly between 1870 and the turn of the 20th century, articulated our current concept of soil: a natural body that has formed over time through a series of physical, chemical, and biological processes acting upon a given soil parent material. These processes are governed by the landscape setting, climate, and soil biology. Jenny[5] called these the fi ve state factors of soil formation: climate, organisms, relief, parent materials, and time. Thus, soils with similar parent materials and biology that have formed under similar climates and landscape settings, will have similar properties, and thus taxonomic classifi cation.
