Análise crítica da profundidade de coleta dos solos para fins de levantamento

Abstract

The Brazilian semiarid region, characterized by the great diversity of rocks and layers, materials of origin, relief and different levels of soil, is marked by the existence of several classes of soils. Such heterogeneity ranges from young and shallow soils to highly evolved and deep soils. This makes analytical characterization difficult for soil surveys because the samples are collected from the surface at a depth predefined by Santos (2005) from 0 to 20, 40 to 60 and 80 to 100 cm. The variation of the thicknesses of the horizons presented in the soil profiles can interfere in the result of these analyzes, with a mixture of horizons during the collection. This work was carried out from soil data collected in the in the Mesoregion South of the Ceará, and had as objective the evaluation of the depths currently used in the collection for survey purposes, comparing them with the mean thicknesses of the surface and subsurface horizons of 92 soil profiles, described by the Cearense Foundation of Meteorology and Water Resources - FUNCEME.