Know Soil, Know Life Terms

A plant that grows on another plant and depends on it for support but not food (non-parasitic). Epiphytes get moisture and nutrients from the air or from small pools of water that collect on the host plant. Spanish moss and many orchids are epiphytes. This is an example of commensalism.

The soil is saturated with water in one or more layers within 200 cm of the mineral soil surface and also has one or more unsaturated layers with an upper boundary above 200 cm depth, below the saturated layer(s) (a perched water table). See also endosaturation.

(i) the wearing away of the land surface by rain or irrigation water, wind, ice, or other natural or anthropogenic agents that abrade, detach and remove geologic parent material or soil from one point on the earth’s surface and deposit it elsewhere; (ii) the detachment and movement of soil or rock by water, wind, ice, or gravity.

Organisms having more complex cell structure including membrane-bound internal organelles.

Charged sites on the surfaces of soil materials such as clay or organic matter that can store nutrients in ion form.

Related to how water moves on the landscape due to slope and landscape position.

Animal life.

Tilled but not planted to a crop during the growing season.

Deposited by rivers.

Large group of eukaryotic organisms that contain a rigid cell wall and include filamentous microorganisms, mushrooms, smuts, rusts, yeasts, and molds.

average annual soil temperature is near or below freezing, has permafrost

Soils with permafrost—tundra, Alaska, Siberia, Northern Canada.

Deliberately ingesting clay or soil.

Organic compound that is volatile and gives soil its “earthy” odor.

Plants whose seeds are not enclosed in an ovule (like a pine cone). Gymnosperm means “naked seed.”