Podzol

In soil science, podzols (known as spodosols in China and the United States of America and podosols in Australia) are the typical soils of coniferous, or boreal forests. They are also the typical soils of eucalypt forests and heathlands in southern Australia, while in Western Europe podzols develop on heathland, which is often a construct of human interference through grazing and burning. Many podzols in this region may have developed over the past 3000 years in response to vegetation and climatic changes. In some British moorlands with podzolic soils there are brown earths preserved under Bronze Age barrows (Dimbleby, 1962). Podzol means "under-ash", and is derived from the Russian под (pod) + зола́ (zola); the full form is "подзо́листая по́чва" (podzolistaya pochva, "under-ashed soil"). It likely refers to the common experience of Russian peasants of plowing up an apparent under-layer of ash (leached or E horizon) during first plowing of a virgin soil of this type.