Are soil and dirt one and the same, and is it possible to run out of either? Hypothetically speaking, is there a set amount of soil on Earth? How does more soil get generated?
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Soil is a mixture of ground up rock and decayed organic material.
Soil is continually created, as part of the great cycles of life.
Ground up rock is created as a result of erosion, with rocks being weathered by water, wind, ice, physical erosion by animals etc.
(and new rocks can be formed over time by sediments being glued together by minerals and compressed, or by magma cooling into new rocks)
New organic matter is created by leaves falling from trees, fruit rotting, animals pooing, animals dying and rotting, insects and fungus rotting wood etc.
It all just goes around and around.
Soil has an ecosystem whereas dirt does not, technically the organisms within said ecosystem generate the top layer of dirt into soil.
In grad school they told me that dirt was what you wash off your hands when you’re done working in the soil.
it’s hard to tell what you mean dirt is what people keep out of their house. And soil is fertile land in which you can grow stuff. both can be the same but not necessarily. About the generation of soil. at the beging the world was full of dirty (rocks sediment ..) but plants (falling leaves ) mushrooms (decaing stuff) made the world so things can grow. so soil is generated all the time as long as we don’t poison or dring up the planet.
Soil is the result of fungi breaking down organic matter. Without mushrooms, there’d be no soil.
The word “soil” describes a subset of “dirt”. All soil is dirt, but not all dirt is soil.
All dirt contains a combination of some pulverized rock and some decaying organic debris. If the ratio of organic stuff to rock stuff is such that there’s a lot of organic stuff and only a little rock stuff, we tend to call that kind of dirt “soil”. At the opposite extreme where it’s all pulverized rock with no organic stuff, that stuff we tend to call “sand” (and that some people wouldn’t call “dirt”, as they assume “dirt” implies at least *some* organic stuff.)
But if you’re looking for the dividing line between dirt that has a high enough organic ratio to be called “soil” and dirt that doesn’t, good luck. There isn’t an objective hard line. It’s a fuzzy subjective definition.
My Soils professor yelled “The only dirt in this classroom is under your fingernails, we study SOIL!”
That said, soil is decomposed rock, if it has organic material in it, it’s Top Soil. You only build with soil.
Soil is just dirt with organic material in it.
Dirt is just some composition of clay, silt, and sand.
Clay is just any hydrophilic, self attracting, mineral which has a particulate size .002mm or smaller.(Typically Silica)
Silt is any mineral particulate with a particulate size .002mm to .05mm.
Sand is any mineral with a particulate size .05mm to 2mm
Think about this. The last ice age glacier retreated from Ohio about 14,000 years ago. The glaciers would have destroyed any soil underneath them. The soil depth where I live (region 7) is now 8 foot. https://soilhealth.osu.edu/soil-health-assessment/soil-type-history#:~:text=Region%207%20is%20the%20oldest%20glaciated%20area%20in,the%205-foot%20depth%20contributes%20li
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