Читать книгу Hydrogeology, Chemical Weathering, and Soil Formation - Allen Hunt - Страница 15

Ideas about soil have a long and rich history. It is perhaps easy to dismiss older notions as outmoded, but the foundations of soil science laid down by the creators of the subject still have currency, even though later thinkers have refined them and added new elements. Expanding a metaphor, if Isaac Newton could see further by standing on the shoulders of giants, then modern soil scientists can see further by standing in the soil pits of their predecessors. This chapter will explore the view taken by Hans Jenny, a veritable giant among soil scientists, that soil may be regarded as a system. Jenny mooted this idea in 1930, but soil concepts developed in the five decades before that date provide an essential background and they will be discussed first, before considering soil as a system, soil as a spatial system, and soil as an interdependent system. The chapter will end with a brief look at prospects for the systems approach in pedology.

In developing ideas about soil and soil formation, Jenny, his predecessors, and later researchers have put forward various models that attempt to explain the structure and function of soil systems and their component parts. Table 1.1 summarizes some of these models and serves as a guide for the discussion that follows.