World Soil Museum

Audio tour of the World Soil Museum. Explanation on how to use the player and find the locations in the museum associated with each section of the audio tour.

Audio tour of the World Soil Museum. Word of welcome by Head of the World Soil Museum and curator, Mr. Stephan Mantel and short introduction to the audio tour.

Soils are truly wonderful! They are the major support systems of human life and welfare. They provide anchorage for roots and hold water and nutrients, long enough for plants and micro-organisms to make use of them. In fact, most of the land’s biodiversity lives in the soil, not above ground. This audio tour guides you along the beautiful soils of our planet. From the red soils of the African Savanna to the black soils of the Russian grass steppes.

Audio tour of the World Soil Museum. Colour is one of the most outstanding properties of soil. The use of soil as a natural colouring agent, applied in visual art, the decoration of building, or as body paint, dates back to ancient times.

Audio tour of the World Soil Museum. Soils are the basis for agriculture. Man manipulates soils and landscapes for the purpose of producing food. Management that affects the properties of soil are practices such as drainage, ploughing, irrigation, land levelling and fertilization. This part of the audio tour discussed soils that pose limitations to farming and soils that have been changed by management.

Audio tour of the World Soil Museum. This part of the audio tour is dedicated to time as a factor in the formation of soils. Soils are not stable, they continue to change over time. We can say that soils go through development phases. So we may speak of young soils and of old soils.

Audio tour of the World Soil Museum. This part of the audio guide highlights the life in the soil. The soil is the habitat for an incredible amount of diverse life forms. A teaspoon full of soil may have thousands of different organism species. So the soil may be considered a below ground factory of organisms with a high biodiversity, that has a relationship with life above ground through complex food chains.

Audio tour of the World Soil Museum. In this part of the tour the source material in which the soil forms, called parent material, is discussed. This may include volcanic rocks or ash deposits, sediments and organic material. It includes the story of the the dramatic eruption of the Laki volcano in 1783 and its effects on society and the climate world wide.

Audio tour of the World Soil Museum. This chapter of the audio tour explains how soils vary across landscapes. On sloping parts of the landscape, erosion and lateral flow of water often predominate. Altitude and direction of slopes, with respect to the sun, influences microclimate, such as temperature, rainfall and solar radiation. Soil formation is influenced by the combination of these factors.

Soils may be poorly drained due to landscape position. In the lower parts of the landscape, such as valley bottoms, soils often accumulate water and sediments, from higher parts of the terrain. These include soils with a shallow groundwater table.

Audio tour of the World Soil Museum. In this section of the audio tour the relation between soil types and climate is explained. Climate has a great influence on soil formation. Some major soil types are strongly associated with specific climate zones, especially at the global level. A top piece in this part of the exhibition is the beautiful soil of the Russian steppes, the Chernozem. It is part of the Glinka Memorial collection that was sampled in 1926.