Vertisols

The word Vertisol was coined by Lehman of the University of Ghent and

introduced in 1956 at the Sixth International Congress of Soil Science

at Paris (Eswaran et al. 1999). In 1960, the Americans adopted it to

characterize one of the major categories of their 7th Approximation. The

term is now universally used in all classifications. It comes from the

Latin vertigo (turning movement). These soils are affected by movements

that we shall examine below. They are black, clayey and spectacular in

many ways.

They represent 2.5 per cent of the soils of the world or 335 million ha,

according to FAO. Present in nearly all latitudes, they are most abundant

in the dry subtropical zone where dry and humid seasons alternate.

6.1 TYPICAL PROFILE AND DIFFERENTIATION

􀂃 Distinguishing features of Vertisols

Dark, often black, Vertisols contain between 30 and 90 per cent particles

of clay size. Mineralogically, layers of 2/1 type are seen, with basal

spacing around 14 Å and having the possibility of expansion. In older

publications these soils were identified as containing montmorillonites

(aluminous, slightly magnesian clay minerals). This is very partially

true. Modern methods detect in these soils mostly ferriferous beidellites

and nontronites (Vingiani et al. 2004). They contain iron substituting for

aluminium in the octahedral position, giving beidellite if the replacement

is partial and nontronite if it is complete. All these clay minerals are

grouped in the family of smectites. Vertisols also contain kaolinite, illites

and, sometimes, chlorites. The principal fact is undoubtedly the presence

of interstratified smectite-kaolinite composed of assemblages of the two

types of layers in varying proportions.