Pedology: The Science of Soil Development

In modern terminology, pedology is the branch of soil science that integrates and quantifies the formation, morphology, and classification of soils as natural landscape bodies. Basic pedological research is directed also at reconstructing past earth surface environments, integrating natural resource databases, and even extending soil development concepts to extraterrestrial systems. The contributions of pedologists can be brought into earth systems science in an especially powerful and exciting way through geographic information systems analysis. The soils are valuable to the study of biological and physicochemical evolution on Earth. Stable isotopes exist for a number of chemical elements commonly found in soil and water, and the natural rarity of some of them makes their use as environmental markers or "signatures" of pedological processes of keen interest. The application of stable-isotope studies to pedological research has expanded greatly as awareness of their utility has increased among basic soil scientists.