Okanogan County. To understand the soils in an area, soil scientists study the landscape and the soils below the surface at different places in the landscape. The landscape in this slide has three distinct landforms, which formed by different geologic processes and contain different types of soils. A glacier covered the lower and middle areas of the landscape more than 15,000 years ago. The soils on the hummocky land in the middle developed from material left behind by glacial ice. Soils formed from material that was moved, sorted, and deposited by water comprise the foreground, once a stream bed for meltwater from the glaciers. The mountains in the background poked above the glacier; there the mountain soils developed directly from the underlying bedrock. |
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