Course description

The discipline “Soil Morphology” is an initial normative discipline for students of the speciality 103 Earth Science (Geography) of the educational program of bachelor’s degree, which is taught in the 1st year in the 2nd semester in the amount of 4 credits (according to the European credit transfer system ECTS).

The course is designed to acquaint students with the basic morphological features of genetic horizons, the criteria for their selection, classification, as well as approaches to the morphological description of soils in the world.

The purpose of the discipline is to master the theoretical knowledge, followed by the consolidation of morphological features and properties of the soil profile in practice and their subsequent use in field research of soils.

After completing this course the student will know: the basic morphological features and properties of soils; structure of soil profiles, their classification by a combination of genetic horizons; nomenclature and symbols of genetic horizons of different schools of soil science (Ukrainian, American, WRB and Russian). The students will be able to determine the morphological characteristics of soils, to explain the flow of elementary soil processes in genetic horizons by the manifestation of morphological characteristics; to use the acquired knowledge for field description of soils.