International standards and resources
A working group of the International Union of Soil Sciences is working on a universal classification of soils and plans to finalise the classification in 2018. The United States Department of Agriculture provides information about this process and previous published classifications.
Australian conventions and resources
The Australian soil and land survey field handbook (3rd edition; CSIRO Publishing) is also a useful resource.
The Australian Soil Classification has been widely adopted as the official national system for organising knowledge about Australian soils. It has been formally endorsed by the Australian Soil Conservation Council, an Australian Government ministerial council.
See also the Australian Soil Resource Information System (ASRIS).
As in biology, soils are classified in a hierarchical system; in Australia, the 5 categories are order, suborder, great group, subgroup and family. In the United States, an additional category is used: series (below the level of family).
In Australia, 14 soil orders are described. The names end in osols and have an initial capital:
Vertosols Rudosols Podosols
Use lower case for terms associated with carbon in soils, although the abbreviations are in capitals:
particulate organic carbon (POC) humus organic carbon (HUM) resistant organic carbon (ROC) soil organic carbon (SOC) major vegetation groups (MVGs)
Reminder. Just because the abbreviation of a term is made up of capitals, it does not mean that the term has initial capitals when it is spelt out.
Do not follow the name of a soil with soil:
Rudosols and Podosols were the most dominant not Rudosol and Podosol soils were the most dominant
Soil names are expressed in the form subgroup, great group, suborder, order, family. Use an initial capital for all names except family names. Family names comprise descriptive terms for 5 criteria: A horizon thickness, gravel of the surface, A1 horizon texture, B horizon texture and soil depth:
Bleached, Eutrophic, Red Chromosol; thin, gravelly, sandy/clayey, shallow
[Bleached is the subgroup, Eutrophic is the great group, Red is the suborder, Chromosol is the order, thin is the A horizon thickness, gravelly is the type of surface, sandy/clayey is the texture of the A1 and B horizons, and shallow is the soil depth.]
