A simple guide for describing soils, 2nd edition

Authors

Angela Stuart-Street
Nicolyn Short Dr, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Western AustraliaFollow
Paul Galloway, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Western AustraliaFollow
Noel R. Schoknecht, Murdoch University

Publication Date

8-2025

Publisher

Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development

City

Perth

Abstract

Soils are enormously diverse and can be very confusing to understand and talk about. This simple guide for describing soils helps to identify the most important parts of a soil profile and provide an easy way to understand and explain what you see. It gives you a step-by-step guide of what soil properties to describe and how to describe them, along with the tools to make basic soil classifications. The soil descriptors help you to identify the soil type and aid in assigning a simple and standardised name to the soil. While this guide is designed to link with a simple classification system already in use for Western Australia — Western Australian soil groups — the soil description standards used here are applicable everywhere.

This guide is suitable for anyone who is interested in understanding the basics of soil morphology, characteristics and description. Experts in other scientific fields, industry consultants, students and interested lay readers will also benefit from using this guide as a stepping stone to a more advanced understanding of soil.

This second edition updates key information resulting from new editions of the Australian Soil Classification, the Australian soil and land survey field handbook and the Western Australian soil groups: a diagnostic key to identify soils in Western Australia. It includes revised visual aids to classification using a simplified key based on soil supergroups and the WA soil groups, new diagrams that explain the exemplar soil types, and an updated glossary to match the references this guide relies on for technical information.

Number of Pages

41

Keywords

soils, soil properties, soil types, soil classification, Western Australia

Disciplines

Agriculture | Environmental Sciences | Soil Science

Recommended Citation

Stuart-Street A, Short N, Galloway P and Schoknecht N (2025) A simple guide for describing soils, 2nd edn, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Western Australian Government.

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