UMD Theses and Dissertations

Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/3

New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a given thesis/dissertation in DRUM.

More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.

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    Multi-Scale Pedologic Investigation of Manganiferous Soils in the Maryland Piedmont
    (2008) Bourgault, Rebecca; Rabenhorst, Martin; Plant Science and Landscape Architecture (PSLA); Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)
    Manganese oxides are usually found in trace quantities in soils, but they are important due to their effects on soil chemistry and morphology. There are rare soils in the Maryland Piedmont that have extremely high amounts of manganese oxides that have not been previously studied. These manganiferous soils were examined at multiple scales in order to determine their spatial extent, to characterize their fundamental morphology, mineralogy, and chemical and physical properties, and to better understand their pedogenesis. The soils occupy areas of 1-2 ha in size, within 200 km2 in eastern Frederick County and western Carroll County. The soils can have as much as 140 g kg-1 Mn as oxides, which pigments the entire soil matrix black in subsoil horizons. It appears that the black, porous, Mn-rich material is derived directly from the dissolution of marble bedrock and accumulation of silicate residues plus Mn and Fe from within the rock.