Pedodiversity on Soil Maps at the District Level

Abstract

The analysis of soil maps for three districts of Bryansk oblast demonstrates that the rank distributions of polygon areas for low soil taxonomic units on these maps have a specific form that can be described as the splicing of several power distributions known as the Pareto laws. The form of the distributions is preserved in the three administrative districts, as well as in the individual soil-geographical areas, into which these districts may be divided. The analysis of variance performed for the logarithms of polygon sizes attests to the impacts of the genetic soil type, soil texture, and the specificity of parent material and underlying substrates on the size of the polygons. However, the ranking of the curves does not display any manifested aggregation of the predominant sizes of the polygons of certain taxonomic soil units.