1 Background
The soil profiles that pedologists describe are components of a larger landscape, and both influence and are influenced by their surrounds. To bring structure to the information we gather about the profile surrounds, the available inputs can be grouped into ‘soil forming factors’. These are commonly conceptualised in soils literature using the ‘clorpt’ model, whereby soils are considered to be a product of interactions of Climate, Organisms, Relief, Parent Material and Time (Jenny 1941; Schaetzl and Thompson 2015; Brevik et al. 2016). This section is loosely organised around these factors and describes where information on them can be found (specific to the New Zealand context) and certain parameters that may (or must) be measured directly in the field.
Throughout this book, recording options are presented for rapid, routine, and detailed logging of site and profile data. It is up to the surveyor to decide the level of detail needed at each site, but in general the detailed options are most appropriate for reference sites and research tasks, the routine options for the exploration phase of mapping, and the rapid options for map validation or checking the degree of soil variability in the vicinity of a more detailed site. Even the rapid logging requirements will support classification according to the New Zealand Soil Classification (Hewitt and MWLR Pedology Staff, 2025) to at least the subgroup level. A summary of the three data recording detail levels is available in Section B.4.