A grey or light-coloured 'E' horizon is the result of severe leaching, or eluviation, which washes out everything but quartz grains. Eluviation is the removal of soil, clay, silt or fine organic ...

Organic soil horizons contain about one-third of the soil carbon. Therefore, the stability of boreal soils is critical to understanding global carbon cycle feedbacks to climate change and soil ...

l), our knowledge of the turn-over of forest soil humus is very incomplete. This is particularly true of the organic matter in soil horizons below the humus layer.

Soil organisms, like earthworms, mix the materials together, merging the boundaries between the horizons. These soils are leached, but not heavily, so the aluminium and iron oxides are dispersed ...