Soil biomantle

The soil biomantle can be described and defined in several ways. Most simply, the soil biomantle is the organic-rich bioturbated upper part of the soil, including the topsoil where most biota live, reproduce, die, and become assimilated. The biomantle is thus the upper zone of soil that is predominantly a product of organic activity and the area where bioturbation is a dominant process. Soil bioturbation consists predominantly of three subsets: faunalturbation (animal burrowings), floralturbation (root growth, tree-uprootings), and fungiturbation (mycelia growth). All three processes promote soil parent material destratification, mixing, and often particle size sorting, leading with other processes to the formation of soil and its horizons. While the general term bioturbation refers mainly to these three mixing processes, unless otherwise specified it is commonly used as a synonym to faunalturbation (animal burrowings). The biomantle includes the topsoil, or A horizon of soils, and also, any underlying lighter-colored (E) horizon that may be present. For midlatitude and subtropical soils that have typical A-E-B-C horizons and profiles, the biomantle is normally that part above the B horizon. In gravelly parent materials where soil particle biosorting by animals has led to the formation of a stonelayer horizon (SL), the base of the stonelayer (SL) defines the base of the biomantle. Biomantles with basal stonelayers are two-layered biomantles that form in parent materials with heterogeneous particle sizes (mixtures of fines and gravels); those lacking stonelayers are one-layered biomantles that form in homogeneous materials (either sands, loess, or gravels of approximately uniform size). If two-layered, the soil profile horizon notations in midlatitude and some subtropical soils are: A-E-SL-B-C, where the A-E-SL horizons constitute the biomantle. Since midlatitude type Bt (argillic) horizons are often lacking in tropical soils owing to an abundance of active and deep bioturbators that move large volumes of soil to the surface (ants, termites, worms, etc.