Every Soil Has A Story

The soil forming factors work together to form a soil profile. Like the profile of your face, a soil profile has features or layers. The layers in a profile are called horizons. Let's take a look at this profile. Can you see the different horizons here? This soil profile is from a creek bed in College Park, MD in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. When the soil scientists were studying this profile, they noticed deposits in the middle of this profile. Right in the middle of the profile, there was a black layer. When the scientists looked at this layer with a hand lens they could see that the black color was due to many tiny bits of charcoal. And they figured out that this charcoal was deposited in the middle of the profile about 300 - 350 years ago.

Why do you think there was charcoal in this soil horizon?