I understand what water and air are composed of and I more or less understand how fire works. But what is soil? If you put your hands in your garden, you will take out very heterogenous stuff, you will get some twigs and bugs which of course are organic matter, but what’s the general brown stuff? Is it organic? Were does it come from and how is it produced? Also collateral question, if earth is organic matter, when the first living organisms came out of the ocean, which were plants, how did they find nutrients?
In: Planetary Science
Soil is a mixture of a number of things,
– organic matter: dead/decaying plants and animal parts, waste from animals (i.e. worm poop), etc.
– mineral matter: various compounds including elements such as iron, calcium, potassium, magnesium, silica, etc. Quartz for example is SiO4. Calcium phosphate (calcium, phosphorus, and oxygen) is another common one.
– organisms: various plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria, usually quite small
– gasses: CO2, Oxygen, various Nitrogen containing gasses, etc.
– water
The exact mixture various significantly from place to place.
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