D G Rossiter's urban soils page

The term "Urban" soils is a shorthand for all soils located in urbanized, industrial, trafficked, mining and military areas; these are the same soils studied by the Soils of Urban, Industrial, Traffic & Mining Areas (SUITMA) working group of the IUSS. They are increasingly important as the world continues to urbanise. Their classification and mapping present particular challenges. For several years I have been involved with SUITMA, mainly in the area of urban soil classification. I coordinated the group that defined the WRB Technosols reference group.

Documents

• Paper: Classification of Urban and Industrial Soils in the World Reference Base for Soil Resources by D G Rossiter

  This is my explanation of the changes in WRB 2006 to better accommodate urban soils.

• World Reference Base for Soil Classification
• Paper: The sixth factor of soil formation by R. Dudal

  Presented at the International Conference on Soil Classification 2004, Petrozavodsk, Russia, 3-5 August, 2004. A systematic view of human influence on soil genesis. (PDF, 143Kb)

Links

• SUITMA 2009 (New York City) meetings; includes abstracts
• ICOMANTH home page, Virginia Tech (USA)
• NRCS (USA) urban soils home page
  • Urban soil primer

    A popular description of soils and their role in urban areas, with many good photos and diagrams. 77 pp.

  • An introduction to Urban soil mapping.
• Berlin Digital Environmental Atlas   /   Digitaler Umweltatlas Berlin

Images and descriptions of urban soils and landscapes

• My images
• Edward Burtynsky art photos of human-affected landscapes (quarries, tyre dumps, tailings, mines, homesteads ...)
• Lackawanna Cutoff, Pequest Fill (NJ)
• Industrial archaeology

URL: http://www.itc.nl/personal/rossiter/research/suitma/suitma.html