gray forest soil

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pedology of Europe

  • Europe
    In Europe: Soils

    …known as degraded chernozems and gray forest soils. At best, chestnut soils—some needing only water to be productive—and, at worst, solonetzic (highly saline) soils cover areas of increasing aridity eastward of Ukraine to the Ural River. Lastly, in southern Europe, where the countryside is fragmented by mountains, plateaus, and hills,…

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lithosphere, rigid, rocky outer layer of Earth, consisting of the crust and the solid outermost layer of the upper mantle. It extends to a depth of about 60 miles (100 km). It is broken into about a dozen separate, rigid blocks, or plates (see plate tectonics).

A series of forces that include slab pull (the sinking of dense blocks into the underlying mantle), slow convection currents deep within the mantle (which are generated by radioactive heating of the interior) and ridge pushing (generated by the upwelling of mantle at divergent boundaries [such as oceanic ridges]) are believed to cause the lateral movements of the tectonic plates (and the continents that rest on top of them) at a rate of several inches per year.

The Editors of Encyclopaedia BritannicaThis article was most recently revised and updated by John P. Rafferty.
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