Fixed

• The parent material written last. A last optional slot such as (C|M|R) now reads one optional slot per layer, the C, M and D in any order and the R last: the matcher reads a slot as a run of one code, so A-S-C-R was [non rattaché] in 0.9.346 and is now a brunisol, A-S-M-C too, Aca-Sca-C-R a calcosol.

• The iron of the FS on the data is read on one basis, the free iron as Fe against the total as Fe2O3 (Q23, as fe_total_pct documents it): FFE / (0.6994 x Fe2O3) above 0.20, free / (0.6994 x Fe2O3) above 0.50.

• Timing. The sequences are matched on the table already read, the completions of the undecided layers stop at the first sign of disagreement, the strict and tolerant passes share one match when no layer is read within tolerance, and the memberships of the frame are memoised: the 44 canonical fixtures classify in about the time of 0.9.346, every result unchanged.

Readings confirmed (2026-11-03)

Hugo confirmed the eight readings of readings.yaml for this part (the intertropical domain of a profile written in the RP notation with no climate or latitude; F against OX, the hardness and the types; the sequences of the ferruginosols; the A, the FSt, the carbonates and the iron of the fersialsols; the origin, the site and the sequences of the fluviosols; the Aso, Eh, BTh, BThd and the index of the grisols; the crust of the gypsosols; the parent material written last), those of the fersialsols and fluviosols amended by his decisions D1, D2, D3 and R1, and three entries record his decisions D3, R1 and R2.

soilKey 0.9.347 (2026-11-03)

Russia: the species, and the 1977 analogue as a note

The Russian soil classification (Field Guide of 2008) now names its soils down to the species (вид) of chapter 5.1, after the subtypes, and gives the analogue of the type in the USSR classification of 1977 (chapter 6) as a note that never changes the classification (Hugo’s decision Q1). The varieties and ranks of 5.2 and 5.3 are not keyed, and a technogenic surface formation still stops at trunk E.

• The twelve tables of 5.1 (pp. 135-137), in the new inst/rules/kidpr2008/species.yaml: the thickness of the grey-humus and light-humus horizons (маломощные, среднемощные, мощные) and of the dark-humus horizon (мелкие to сверхмощные), of the peat horizon of a mineral soil, of the agro horizon; the depth and place of gleying (глубоко-, поверхностно-, профильно-оглеенные); the lower boundary of the bleached horizon; the layer over the solonetzic horizon (корковые to глубокие); the depth of the carbonates (карбонатные to сильновыщелоченные) and of the soluble salts (солончаковые to глубокозасоленные); and, in the organogenic trunk, the decomposition of the peat, its botanical composition and the thickness of the peat body. Each table says what it measures, on which horizon, for which types, and its class limits as numbers.
• The species level. Every table that applies to the type is read; the class that holds is a row of level species of levels (code <table>:<class>, the English gloss in name, the Russian in name_native), named after the subtypes in the order of the tables: “Sod-podzolic [typical], medium-thick, deep-eluvial”, “Дерново-подзолистые [типичные], среднемощные, глубокоэлювиальные”. The bleached species takes the prefix form of p. 136 with the term of its horizon (мелкоподзолистые for the E of a podzol, глубокоэлювиальные for an EL, неглубокоосолоделые in the solods); two dominant plants give the double name of the peat (древесно-осоковые). qualifiers$species and species_native list them, and the trace has every table read (phase species) with its measure, layers and evidence.
• Three-valued, as intervals. A depth not recorded, a layer whose horizon the data leave undecided at the edge of a horizon, or a horizon that reaches the bottom of the description when a deeper class is possible, leaves the species undecided: it is not named, it is listed in qualifiers$species_undecided with a note, and the name is not made provisional. A value at a limit is read by the owner’s rule (the lower end of a range for a minimum, the upper end for a maximum).
• The 1977 analogue (pp. 139-161), in the new inst/rules/kidpr2008/correlation_1977.yaml: the 268 rows of the correlation table, each a 2004 type with its 2004 formula, the type of 2008 it stands for, whether the soils were distinguished in 1977, and the 1977 units it names (their short printed names, level and extent: full, approximately, partly, mostly), with soilKey’s English paraphrase. 267 rows resolve to a type of 2008, each to a different one (one 2004 type has no type of 2008); 144 say the soils were not distinguished; eight types of 2008 have no row. classify_kidpr2008() adds the analogue of the assigned type as a line in warnings and as qualifiers$analogue_1977; the note says so where the soils were not distinguished or chapter 6 has no row, and a soil whose type is unassigned, or a chemozem, gets none. The report and the Pro app show it.
• Two formulas of chapter 6 that the text layer had hidden (AY-AEL-BM-C on p. 143, printed letter-spaced, and P-TUR-C on p. 156, printed on the line of its name) join the fixture of the formulas: 268 rows of chapter 6, not 266.
• A new horizon attribute, peat_botanical_composition (the plants of the peat with their shares, in English or Russian), for the botanical species.
• classify_kidpr2008() gains species (default: as subtypes); subtypes = FALSE still stops at the type. New i18n keys classify.level_species, classify.levels_species, classify.kidpr_1977, report.level_species, report.kidpr_1977 and report.kidpr_1977_desc (EN, PT).
• The other systems are unchanged (their fixtures byte-identical).

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-03)

• Gleying by its continuity: surface-gleyed is gleying in the upper horizons (those starting above 50 cm) that does not continue below 50 cm; profile-gleyed is gleying from a horizon starting above 50 cm down to the bottom, only a humus or agro horizon that is not gleyed allowed over it (AU-G-CG and PU-G-CG are profile-gleyed); deep-gleyed is unchanged (a gleyed layer from 100-130 cm, nothing gleyed above 100 cm). A layer whose gleying is undecided is read both ways.
• Depths from the mineral surface: the depths of the species are measured under the organic horizons O and T that start the profile, since the litter-peat O does not count (p. 136); the species of the peat itself still measure the peat. A podzolic soil O 0-8 over EL 8-23 is shallow-eluvial.
• A double botanical name puts the larger share last, as Russian writes it: wood 45 with sedge 50 is древесно-осоковые.
• The other readings are accepted: the class limits (the lower end of a range for a minimum, the upper end for a maximum, the last carbonate class 80-120); what each table measures; an undecided species not named and the name not provisional; the rows of chapter 6 resolved to the types of 2008; the readings of its two columns. Transitions such as AUBCA stay out of the thickness of the dark-humus horizon. No reading of the Russian classification waits for confirmation.

Fixed after the review (2026-11-03)

• Cotton-grass is no longer read as herb: “grass” after “cotton” is not the herb, and the spellings of one plant (cotton-grass, cottongrass, Eriophorum, пушица) add up, in a layer and across layers.
• A transition one of whose masters is a carbonate horizon (AUBCA) has carbonates: a chernozem AU 0-40 over AUBCA 40-70 is slightly leached, no longer medium leached.
• The bleached species needs only the lower boundary of its horizon: an EL whose top is not recorded no longer leaves it undecided. Whether a horizon reaches the bottom of the description is read on the depths, not on the order of the layers.
• The adjective мелкие, printed by two tables (the dark-humus horizon under 30 cm and the layer of 5-10 cm over the solonetzic horizon, p. 136), is named once; both rows stay in levels.
• The 1977 note keeps what the table adds to a unit (a new qualifier of the analogues): the varieties of CE03, the genus рихковые of CP10, the erosion of CS13, the reclaimed peat soils of raised and fen bogs of CS05 and CS06 (now the 1977 types торфяные болотные верховые and низинные).
• The PDF report escapes the marks of the formulas (, the backtick) in the 1977 section.

soilKey 0.9.346 (2026-11-03)

France: the Référentiel pédologique 2008 attaches its first 29 references

The French Référentiel pédologique 2008 (AFES; Baize and Girard coord.; Éditions Quæ, 2009) enters the registry as rp2008 (namespace rp, aliases rp and referentiel; france, french and fr stay with the CPCS 1967), experimental and opt-in: classify_all() runs it only when asked. classify_rp2008() tests the 29 references of the first nine groups of references (GER): alocrisols (2), andosols (6), anthroposols (5), arénosols (1), brunisols (2), the solums dominated by calcium or magnesium (7: rendosols, calcosols, dolomitosols, rendisols, calcisols, magnésisols, calcarisols), chernosols (3), colluviosols (1) and cryosols (2). Every other classification is unchanged.

• Not a key: an attachment. Every reference is tested every time (Q3): its sequences of reference horizons, matched with match_horizon_sequence() on the horizon frame (the RP notation where written, else the horizons on the data of 0.9.343), and the side tests of its chapter (depths, thicknesses, forbidden horizons, saturation, carbonates, permafrost, colluvial and anthropic materials), in inst/rules/rp2008/references/<ger>.yaml, each with its page, its WRB 2006 name (Annex 5, display only) and its distinctions in the comments.
• Degrees. Each reference is evaluated strictly and with the tolerances of p. 64 (tolerances.yaml: depth and thickness 10 to 200 cm, pH 0.2, CEC 1, S/CEC 5, organic carbon 8 and 30; every other threshold strict, Q5): simple, imperfect (met only within tolerance, never promoted, Q4), simple or imperfect, undecided or failed. The imperfect cases the chapters name (calcosol leptique, rendosol pachique, arénosol rédoxique, anthroposol lithique, calcisol insaturé en surface …) attach imperfectly, their qualifier written in the name (“calcosol leptique”).
• One main name and the candidates. The precedence of the chapters first (precedence.yaml: a colluviosol only when no other reference attaches, a calcarisol before the other six of its GER, the arénosols before the rendosols, calcosols and dolomitosols, the perhydric silandosols first, the calcisol against the brunisol eutrique by the carbonate reserve of Q16 …), then the degree, then the order of the rapid key (rapid_key.yaml, pp. 66-68; the grisols in soilKey’s 7c), Q6. Doubles only for the pairs the book prescribes (doubles.yaml: calcisol-calcosol, anthroposol transformé-brunisol eutrique when the transformé is imperfect, calcosol-anthroposol transformé; the pairs with references of later releases listed and waiting), Q7. With no reference, “[non rattaché]” and the three nearest references. The new slot candidates holds every reference that may attach, with its degree, the criteria that fail, pass only within tolerance or are undecided, and the book’s statements that rank it after the name (precedence). The name is French, as printed, in the singular, the English gloss in levels$name_en, the GER a label (rsg_or_order).
• The other 25 GER. Their 81 references come in later releases. key.yaml lists all 34 GER and 110 references, with a signpost for each GER not implemented (the horizons or materials of its chapter: BT for the luvisols, BP for the podzosols, G or g within 50 cm for the réductisols and rédoxisols …): a profile that shows them gets the GER among the candidates, undecided and not implemented yet, and the name is provisional when it ranks first. No profile is attached elsewhere without saying so.
• identify_horizons(pedon, "rp2008") now reaches the RP identification; make_rp2008_example() gives one profile per reference, in the RP notation; the examples are in the Pro app.
• load_rules() reads the folders and files a registry entry names besides its levels (rule_folders, rule_files); no other system names any.

Hugo’s decisions read here (2026-11-02)

• Q1 (references and types, the GER a label), Q3 (one name and the candidates), Q4 (the tolerance band is imperfect), Q5 (the thresholds not in the table strict), Q6 (the book, the degree, the rapid key), Q7 (the doubles the book prescribes), Q14 (the colluvial origin required), Q15 (the anthroposols by their materials and the recorded history), Q16 (the carbonate reserve by a positive proof), and the defaults 1, 2, 9, 13 and 21.

Hugo’s answers on the readings (2026-11-03)

• The 17 readings of this release (readings.yaml) are accepted, revised by the review: the imperfect cases (D1), the open sequences (D2), the perhydric andosols (D2, D3), the artificiels and construits (R3), the arénosols (D9 and decision 3), the brunisols (D6), the carbonate reserve (D7), the calcium GER (D4, D9), the chernosols (D5, R2) and the cryosols (decision 1).

After the review (2026-11-03)

• D1. A reference attached imperfectly within the tolerance of p. 64 is named by the imperfect case of its chapter whose test holds strictly: calcosol leptique at [A + Sca] 32 cm, rendosol pachique at Aca 38 cm, arénosol rédoxique with -g at 70 cm, arénosol leptique with clay at 110 cm, vitrandosol leptique at Avi 27 cm, anthroposol artificiel leptique at Z 45 cm, anthroposol reconstitué leptique at Ltp 40 cm.
• D2, D3, R5. The perhydric silandosols and aluandosols take the name only when the perhydric test holds; the aluandosols hapliques no longer test it; an And, Snd, Alu or Slu under an Avi makes no vitrandosol (an épivitrique silandosol); the leptique case of the andosols needs the andic set thinner than 30 cm.
• D4. The calcium and magnesium GER excludes a V or SV within 100 cm only (bathyvertique deeper, p. 116), and a Ys or Ym within 10 cm (a deeper Ys no longer excludes).
• D5, R2. The chernosols typiques forbid only a BT directly under the Ach, or a humic BTh; the mélanoluviques need over 0.6 % organic carbon in the first BT; a cultivated LAh or LAch counts for the 40 cm of Ach.
• D6. The brunisols read their forbidden horizons, and their sequence, in the first material (the first lithological unit of 50 cm or more): A-S-IISca-IIRca is a brunisol eutrique; under crops their sequence is LS-S; S/CEC over 50 % eutric and under 50 % dystric as printed, both imperfect at exactly 50 %, the eutrique named.
• D7. The carbonate reserve reads a closed vocabulary of calcareous rocks and materials, whole words, and not when denied (non-calcareous, decalcified, décarbonaté); a tuff is no longer a reserve.
• D8. A test on the first layer of a set is undecided when an undecided layer above it could belong to the set and would give another verdict.
• D9. The arénosols come before the rendosols, calcosols and dolomitosols only when the A is not biomacrostructured, and are excluded by them when it is; the calcarisols come first only when they attach strictly (a Km within tolerance: a calcosol).
• R3, R4. The artificiels need a technological material dominant (an earthy Ztr or a holorganic ZO makes none); the construits have a leptique case (30 to 50 cm), and a recorded construction keeps them first; the signpost of the rankosols lets a Sal under 10 cm through.
• The nearest references of a solum attached to none include the colluviosols when colluvial material is recorded; the print of an attachment and the report’s provisional section speak of an attachment, not of a key (the report’s footer, common to every system, waits for the name builder).
• Undecided layers that leave the alternatives of a reference undecided are completed with their candidates (up to 32 ways); a layer of 50 % carbonates and gypsum or more, or indurated, is mineral even with no carbon recorded (a calcrete Km).

Hugo’s decisions after the review (2026-11-03)

• 1. A cryosol minéral is simple with the cryoturbation recorded, imperfect when the data show the permafrost within 200 cm and record no cryoturbation, and then takes the name before the brunisols and the other references of later entries of the rapid key.
• 2. The double anthroposol transformé-brunisol eutrique is written only when the transformé is imperfect (the intermediate case of p. 91); a simple transformé takes the name and the brunisol stays among the candidates.
• 3. An Ach, And, Alu, Avi, Aso or Sal in the profile excludes the arénosols, so that a texture not recorded no longer makes those names provisional.

Hugo’s decisions on the readings of the review (2026-11-03)

• The first material (a cover under 50 cm skipped); the completion of undecided layers in the sequences; a calcrete with no carbon recorded is mineral; the first layer of a set under an undecided one (D8); the colluviosols among the nearest references; the signposts of the rankosols (a thin Sal) and gypsosols (a Ys within 20 cm).
• The carbon of a layer holds over its whole depth: a single Ach of 0-45 cm with 3 % carbon is clinohumic (0.6 % or more below 40 cm). No reading of the Référentiel waits for confirmation.

soilKey 0.9.345 (2026-11-02)

Russia: the subtypes and the full name

The Russian soil classification (Field Guide of 2008) names its soils down to the subtype (подтип): each division has one list of subtypes in chapter 4, and a soil is named by its type and every subtype of the list that passes, in the order of the list, comma-separated and in the plural as printed: “Подзолистые глееватые, языковатые” (Hugo’s decision Q16).

• The 26 lists, 558 entries (the chemozems CU have none), in the new inst/rules/kidpr2008/subtypes.yaml, transcribed in the book’s order from pp. 79-133: AA 15, AB 10, BA 22, BB 12, BC 14, [DA] 19, CA 35, CB 30, CC 16, CD 24, CE 16, CF 17, CG 15, CH 27, CI 27, CJ 18, CK 16, CL 11, CM 22, CN 31, CO 22, CP 23, CQ 30, CR 30, CS 35, CT 21. Each entry has soilKey’s ASCII key (g, ELf, hh for [hh], e_hf for [e-hf], akl, cryoturb for @, perm for the permafrost sign, TTal for TT, TTash for TT”), the index as printed, the Russian name, an English gloss, the hosts, the page and notes; the universal subtypes are marked.
• The subtype level after the type, read by the feature tests of 0.9.344 (data first, then the Russian notation, then the defaults): the subtypes are rows of level subtype in levels (as the Hungarian subtypes), the full name in English in name (“Podzolic gleyic, tongued”) and in Russian in qualifiers$name_native; every entry, with its evidence, route and hosts, is in the trace (phase subtype).
• Typical and provisional. When every entry is FALSE the soil is of the typical subtype, soilKey’s [типичные] ([typical]), which the lists leave out (p. 76); when some are undecided the name is provisional, the undecided entries in provisional_because and in a warning, the passing ones still named.
• Not named again when the formula of the type writes the feature: g in the gley types, q in the quasigley ones, ELg in CA03, BF in CB05, s and cs in the BCAs,cs of the solonetzes, the residual carbonates in a type written with Cca; a feature in parentheses (C(ca), Q(s)) is optional and does not count. A V or an S laid over a horizon (BCA+V, AU+S) names the soil vertic or saline. Where the list has ELg, g is read on the layers other than EL.
• Single-type sentences. The list decides where a feature applies; a sentence of 3.2 restricts it only when it names a single type: te in the oligotrophic peat soils, [akl] in the brown arid soils, crm in the podzolic soils, ct in the sod-podzolic soils, cf in the gleyzems, ocr in the peaty cryozems.
• The carbonate profile of CI, CJ and CQ to CT is one of a scale (default 19): nodules over pseudomycelium over diffuse carbonates, the form with the migrating carbonates of the humus horizon (AUlc-BCAmc, AUlc-BCAnc, AJlc-BCAnc) where lc holds. The double el of CI and CM is read by its place; [BHF-BAN]>3 of the volcanic soils is a test of its own (more than three elementary profiles buried under the surface soil).
• Buried soils and thin deposits. A soil keyed by its buried horizons under a deposit of 40 cm or less keeps them for its subtypes, and the deposit written as a horizon of 5-40 cm over a bracketed humus horizon is rh (RU, RY, RJ) or r (C); only where the formula writes the buried soil ([ABC], {ABC}) is it left out.
• Reachability. On profiles built from the formulas of each division, every entry is named somewhere except those its division cannot have: s and cs in CK (written in every formula) and x in the divisions of trunk C keyed after the chemozems (an X within 30 cm makes a chemozem); pb in CC, CE and CG and agr, ad, pa in the abrazems are reached only by the feature tests, not in a classified soil.
• The book’s own names are reproduced: the sod-pale-podzolic gleyic soil and the podzolic soil with a podzol microprofile (p. 60), the podzolised podbur (p. 60), the contact-bleached podzol (p. 67), the dark-humus water-accumulative stratozem (p. 129), and the chemozem of p. 134 keeps its name.
• classify_kidpr2008() gains subtypes = TRUE; FALSE stops at the type (the tests of the keys and types use it). A soil whose type is unassigned gets no subtypes.
• On the 27 examples the classification takes about 5 s instead of 3; on the 44 canonical fixtures 5 s instead of 4. The other systems are unchanged (their fixtures byte-identical).

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02 and 2026-11-03)

Nine readings of the subtypes, accepted by Hugo and recorded in readings.yaml as his decisions, as revised after the review of the subtypes: no subtypes for a soil whose type is unassigned; the six single-type sentences; what counts as written in the formula (the horizon that is the feature in full: G, Q, V, ML, S, F, CR; Cca keeps the residual-carbonate subtype out of the solods; an optional (ca) does not; a V or S overlay is v or s); the hosts the lists narrow (h, mr, Th, [e-hf], el of the weakly developed soils on W, hi of the agrozems under PT, ae of CJ on AJ, crm of the cryozems on or over CR, ox, fn and ff of the eluvial soils on their D or EL); a buried soil does not name the soil over it where the formula writes it, and a thin deposit over a buried soil is r or rh; the misprints corrected and the glosses kept; the layered-ochric soils (buried profiles only); the subtypes their division cannot have (pb in CC, CE and CG; agr, ad and pa in the abrazems; s and cs in CK; x in trunk C after the chemozems; the contact-eluviated podzol of p. 67, since the CB list has no el; no v for CH04 with a V on its G; a solonchak under a small deposit loses its division in the key); and the form of the full name. A tenth, of 2026-11-03: where the list has ELg, g is read on the layers other than EL (gleying in EL alone is ELg alone, in BT too both). No reading of the Russian classification waits for confirmation.

The report’s note on the undecided classes now covers the undecided subtypes too, and print() no longer lists the Russian full name and the formula of the type among the qualifiers.

soilKey 0.9.344 (2026-11-02)

Russia: the tests of the genetic features

The Russian soil classification (Field Guide of 2008) gains the tests of its genetic features (признаки, section 3.2 and the subtype lists of chapter 4): one test per feature, shared by every division that lists it, for the subtypes that follow (the 26 lists and the full name come next). Nothing is named yet, so every classification is unchanged.

• 67 tests, the 73 index forms. One internal function per feature of features.yaml (the 64 of 3.2 and w, x, rx of the lists); the aliases of the book (tu, ko, ag, as, ael, hh, akl) and the host forms of the lists (ELf, ELg, Th, Oh, AUh, AUel, Gel, Pw, PUw, TEmr, Tote, Di, Del, AJ[akl], and the pairs AUlc-BCAmc, AUlc-BCAnc, AJlc-BCAnc, which need both parts) are read through them. Each test is three-valued and gives its evidence and the attributes that would decide it.
• Data first, then the notation, then the defaults. A feature is read on the recorded data where an attribute records what it describes (the proxies of Q17: g, q, v, s, cs, nn, i, the columnar sn, BH and BF by the carbon of the BHF, an by the oxalates, the sapric h, lc, mc, nc and dc by the form of the carbonates, ml, the permafrost sign, @, tr, y, [hh], ro, r, rh, ur, rr), and the key to horizons gives the small horizons and the features it ends in (ao, e, el, r, rh, tr, u, ca). Where the data say nothing, the Russian notation decides: a feature not written on a layer of a profile written in it is absent; a letter of another notation can add one (an FAO Bg suggests g). Where neither does, a field observation not recorded is absent and a measurement not recorded leaves the feature undecided. hi, pl, crm, f, el on a horizon, ic, agr, ad, pr, ff, fn, ocr and yu come from the notation only (Q17). Recorded data that contradict the notation decide, with a note.
• Hosts and places. A feature holds on the horizons the text puts it on, with the analogies of Q17 (pl in CRM, cf at the edge of CR) and the horizons of the lists that name it; a host the data leave undecided leaves a passing feature undecided, and with no host the feature is absent. The double el of CI and CM is read by its place: in the AU, solodised (осолоделые); under the AU, eluviated (элювиированные).
• x, rx and ur (Q17). x is an X horizon (pollutants at the extremely hazardous level within 30 cm) in a soil the key did not send to the chemozems; rx a toxic layer of 5-40 cm over a buried humus horizon; ur the same layer with 20 % or more of artefacts. pb is read in the agro horizon with over 1.5 % humus, and in the light-humus carbonate soils (CJ) on a natural soil with deflation or truncation recorded (Q19).
• The dispatcher (internal) runs a list of (feature, host, place) entries on a pedon and returns one row per entry: the feature, its code, the host, the place, the layers, the verdict, the route (data, notation or both), the evidence and what is missing. Its metadata are in the new inst/rules/kidpr2008/feature_tests.yaml (the test, its route, the hosts, the place, whether it is a field observation or a measurement, the attributes it reads); features.yaml keeps the hosts the text gives.
• On the 27 examples every feature is decided; on the 44 canonical fixtures of the other systems 2,849 of 2,948 feature tests are decided, the undecided ones mostly the salts and the permafrost, which those profiles do not record.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02)

• Features read on the data where Q17 is silent: te (high-moor over a thinner low-moor peat within 50 cm), e (also bleached spots recorded in a humus or middle horizon), el on the data only as the band of key 52a, m (a weak pedogenic structure in the top C that is not sand), tk (a clay crust with polygonal cracks), ox (redox features of 50 % or more in G), ek (a whitish band of 5 cm or less over a heavier lithological layer or D), gr (a granular BFM), d (a platy surface layer of a natural soil), pa (abandoned or fallow land on a ploughed horizon), md (a sapric surface layer over the peat), pir (a pyrogenic layer of over 2 cm on the peat), aq and ae (the origin of the stratified horizon), TT and TT” (alluvial or ash bands in the peat), w (a W over the host) and ca (also local effervescence with no carbonate neoformation).
• From the notation only: mr, [e-hf], [akl], cf and ct, like the features of Q17’s list; in a profile not written in the Russian notation these features are absent, not undecided.
• Hosts and places: the hosts of 3.2 and of the lists that name a feature elsewhere (f, i, crm, fn, hi, ic, sn, pa, e, w on the horizon under the W); a small horizon counts for the host beside it; AUel is el in the AU, the eluviated el is el under the AU, Gel el on G; an undecided host leaves a passing feature undecided, no host makes it absent.
• Deposited layers and cut-points: r, rh, ur, rr, rx need 5-40 cm over a buried humus horizon; ur 20 % to under half of artefacts, rr half or more and not toxic, rx a hazard above permissible; ro every mineral horizon 5YR or redder; cs visible gypsum (CaSO4 0 % none); s by the EC of chapter 9 (ECe 4, EC 1:5 0.2 dS/m); ml hard concretions; g not on olive mottles alone, q olive mottles of 5Y chroma 3-4; [hh] darker by a value and richer in carbon than the layer above; y with the retic or albeluvic stand-in, flagged.
• The four readings are in readings.yaml as his decisions; no reading of the Russian classification waits for confirmation.

After the review (2026-11-02)

• Fixes. y only under an eluvial horizon (E, EL, AEL, BEL), dark tongues from a humus horizon being yu; ca not where any form of secondary carbonates is recorded, nor on an FAO k layer, and the FAO Ck no longer suggests ca; v and sn not ruled out by a structure alone (the notation decides), q not by mottles of other colours; pa ruled out only by current tillage on an agro horizon; ro leaves out the organic and peat layers by their horizon and reads the gley, blue, purple and neutral hues as not red, RP as red; x ruled out by a hazard category recorded within 30 cm, and written only on a layer starting within 30 cm; g not on mottles recorded as “none”; m undecided when the texture of the rock is not recorded, a weak no when the grade is not; d read on the first mineral layer under an organic one.
• The salts: over 1 % in the top 20 cm makes the salt horizon S and no feature s in the profile; ECe decides over EC 1:5 where both are recorded.
• Limits of the definitions: te may be a small horizon; crm only over BT; i on the parent rock only at its top; nn 10-20 %; a crust layer of tk 0.5 cm or less; d not on a fine platy structure; the muck band of h on top of a humus horizon only on the AU of the dark-humus gley soils; ml in the middle or lower profile only; @ reads yes and TRUE; [e-hf] in or beside EL (the example of p. 60, O-[e-hf]-EL-BEL-BT-C).
• The dispatcher stops on an unknown host or place and returns an empty table for no entries.

Hugo’s decisions after the review (2026-11-02)

• Accepted edits: crm over BT only; [e-hf] in or beside EL.
• New readings (readings.yaml, “The feature tests after the review”): ca a field observation (effervescence not recorded is absent; an FAO k layer a weak no); m with 15 % clay or more as a loamy or clayey rock when no texture class is recorded; tk fails on a surface layer of 0.5-2 cm (a crust thicker than 0.5 cm); d fails on a fine or very fine platy structure; [hh] by the darker colour, confirmed by the carbon; q ruled out by mottles recorded as none, other colours only a weak no; sn never ruled out by the data; s ruled out for the whole profile by over 1 % salts within the top 20 cm; the muck band h on top of a humus horizon only on an AU in a profile with G.

soilKey 0.9.343 (2026-11-02)

France: the reference horizons of the Référentiel pédologique 2008 on the data

The Référentiel pédologique 2008 has no key to its reference horizons: they are concepts read with the whole sequence (p. XII). This release reads them on the recorded data, layer by layer, for profiles not written in the RP notation, and gives the horizon frame the references will be matched on. Nothing is classified yet, so every classification of the other systems is unchanged; the registry entry and the references follow.

• A fixed order of tests (internal, .rp_identify()), soilKey’s, from the book’s order of presentation (p. 6) and its statements of dominance: the layers and materials (R, M, D, P, TH, Z and its kinds, Mli, Mt); the holorganic horizons (H with Hf, Hm, Hs and Ha; O with OL, OFr, OFm, OHr, OHf and OHta); the coarse elements (ND, X with Xgr, Xc, Xp); G (Gr, Go, AG), which dominates every other character of the layer, so no SG or BTG; the indurated and accumulation horizons (U, K, Kc, Km, Si, Sim, Fe, Fem, Femp, Y, Ys, Yp, Ym, OXm, OXc); the surface A horizons (An, Ach, Aso, Aca, Ado, Aci, Amg, Alu, And, Avi, Av, Anod, Ae, A, Js); the subsurface ones (E, BP, BPh, BPs, BT, BTß, V, SV, Snd, Slu, F, Fox, Fhy, OX, RT, FE, Sn, FS, Sp, Sca, Sdo, Sci, Smg, Sal, S, Jp, C); then the features of every layer (g, ho, k, t, v, x, y, d, cn, j, cry, nod, c, b, ca, a, h of Scah) on the hosts the book lists, and the overlays L, Na and Sa (LA, NaBT, SaA, JZ). Every test is three-valued: the first that holds gives the code, the other codes that hold or stay undecided go to the candidates, and a layer the data leave open is undecided with the attributes that would decide it.
• The frame has the columns of identify_horizons() and the RP ones: the family of the code, the code written with its prefixes, features and Roman numeral (composed: LAch, NaBTg, II Scag), the kinds a code may be refined to (variants: H to Hf, Hm, Hs), the thresholds met only within the tolerance of p. 64 (imperfect), the WRB stand-ins and the other substitutes used, a lower grade where they were, the depths from the datum (top_rp, bottom_rp), the lithological discontinuity and the hints of other notations.
• The notation and the data. A layer written in the RP notation keeps its code; the order of tests runs on its data as well, and a different reading goes to the evidence (route “both” when they agree). A layer in the CPCS or FAO notation is read on the data, its designation narrowing the candidates through Annex 6 and the FAO letters.
• The readers (R/rp-readers.R): the moist colour, the carbon classes, the carbonates and effervescence (cold, hot, the molar CaCO3/MgCO3), S/CEC with its CEC method, the sodium over the sum of the bases, the coarse elements by weight with the volume band, the redox features (location, relict), the reduced matrix, the salts, the intertropical and andosol gates, ploughing, the depth datum (the top of the first layer that is not a litter OL, FAO Oi or CPCS A00) and the hydromorphy of a profile from its frame.
• WRB stand-ins, flagged and with a lower grade, where a field descriptor is missing: argic() for the clay coatings of BT, spodic() for BP, calcic() and petrocalcic() for K, vertic_horizon() and vertic_properties() for V and SV, nitic_horizon() for the pressure faces of Sn, ferralic() for F and OX, chernic() and mollic() for Ach, umbric_horizon() for Aso (never sombric()), albic() for E, stagnic_properties() for g, andic_properties() and vitric_properties() for the andosol domain, retic_properties() and albeluvic_glossae() for BTd, continuous_rock() for R, and some others.
• New site field intertropical: the site declared in or outside the intertropical domain, where F, OX, RT, ND, FE, OXc and OXm are tested (Q18).
• The identification is internal until the registry entry rp2008 exists: identify_horizons() does not reach it yet.

Hugo’s decisions read here (2026-11-02)

• The order of tests (Q10): soilKey’s order from the book’s order of presentation; the first test that holds gives the code, the others go to the candidates; a missing field descriptor is read through a WRB diagnostic, flagged, never the faux amis of p. 392.
• Coarse elements (Q11), methods (Q12), functional redox (Q13), the most specific text (Q17), the tropical domain (Q18), H against O (Q19) and the defaults 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18 and 20, as the readers and inst/rules/rp2008/readings.yaml state them.
• The new site field intertropical (Q18) is kept: the site declared in or outside the intertropical domain, before the Köppen climate and the latitude.
• The readings of the horizons on the data, accepted (inst/rules/rp2008/readings.yaml): an undecided G leaves the layer undecided against the code read after it (G dominates, p. 280); the designation of another notation narrows the candidates and decides a single one left, never an H; a grey matrix is reductic only with a sign of water excess (Gr with 10 % redox features or less, Go with segregations at the voids); the holorganic layers by the loss on ignition, else carbon 30 +/- 5 %, and the kinds of O by the fine organic matter; the surface run of the A horizons and the A material (0.5 % carbon or more, not bleached), Js and Jp, Ae; Ach (value 3.5 or less, chroma 2 or less, carbon 3 % or more for every texture), Aso (the list of p. 13 as the test, the grisols of p. 193 as evidence, imperfect when only one holds) and An; the carbonates (a slight effervescence not generalised, no carbonate recorded at pH under 6.5 not carbonated) and the calcimagnesian variant of Aci and Sci, imperfect; the stand-in of K only below the surface and with more CaCO3 than every layer below; BT (the increase of the WRB argic horizon, clay films common or many), BTss, BTd and E on the data; BP (the oxalate, else spodic() under a bleached layer or with more carbon above); V, SV and Av; the intertropical horizons (F by the CEC of the clay, OX, RT, FE; OXm and OXc, not Fem, in the domain); Sn, FS, Sp, Sal and the andosol gate; the layers and materials (R, M, D, P, TH, Z, Mli, Mt); coarse elements not recorded are none; gypsum, silica and iron (Ys, Yp, Ym, Si, Sim, Fe, Fem, Femp); the overlays L, Na and Sa; the features.

soilKey 0.9.342 (2026-11-02)

Russia: the types of trunks A, B and D, and the name of the chemozems

The Russian soil classification (Field Guide of 2008) gains the types of the six divisions of the organogenic, synlithogenic and weakly developed trunks: 58 types, matched as the types of trunk C are (0.9.338, 0.9.339). The chemozems (CU), which have no types, are now named by their pollutants and the soil they were. Every division has its type level; the subtypes follow. Every other classification is unchanged.

• The 58 types in inst/rules/kidpr2008/types/: AA 5 (peat soils), AB 4 (peatozems), BA 18 (alluvial soils), BB 4 (volcanic soils), BC 10 (stratozems) and [DA] 17 (the weakly developed soils of trunk D, the division the book does not code). Each has soilKey’s code in brackets ([AA01] … [DA17], in the order of chapter 4, the natural types first), the Russian name as printed (two slips of the diagrams of the alluvial soils, глеевы and the second мергелистые, as chapter 6 writes them), an English gloss, the formula as the fixture of the formulas transcribes it, and the page.
• What the formulas test (Q14). The buried soil [ABC] names the stratozems on a buried soil and is tested, a buried profile starting within 100 cm (p. 128); the substrate D is not. The substrate names the types of trunk D and is tested: the marks of the loose rock (C= loamy and clayey, C.. sandy, C alluvial, C” ash, C aeolian) and the hard rock R, with its carbonate or gypsum mark where written (Rca, Rcs); the C of the solonchaks is not. The rock under the dry-peat soils (AA05) is tested: the hard rock R or loose material C (p. 43); a rock under the peat closes no other formula of the peat soils. The alluvial and ash marks of the parent material in BA and BB, and the buried profiles {ABC} of the volcanic soils, are not tested; the buried humus horizons of the alluvial soils are not in the formula (p. 124).
• The peat of trunk A. A peat horizon that runs across the line 50 cm under the top of the peat body is TT below that line (Q22): TO 0-120 cm is TO-TT (AA01), PT over T 25-125 cm is PT-TT (AB01); a peat horizon that starts 50 cm or more under the top of the body is TT (TO 0-50 over TO 50-120 is AA01). A T of the notation in the peat soils is TO or TE by the botany of its layer, undecided between them when the layer records none.
• The substrate of trunk D. The layer directly under the O or W names the type; a deeper rock is not tested (W-C..-R is DA04). On the data route a layer with no horizon under the O or W is the loose rock, and an undesignated layer that names a rock and records no texture is undecided between the R and the C types. A C whose mark is not written takes it from the data, the layer’s own origin first and the site’s parent material only when the layer records none: an alluvial, ash or aeolian origin (loess is not aeolian here), else the texture (sand and loamy sand are sandy, finer is loamy and clayey), undecided with no texture recorded; the legend’s aeolian mark “” is the of the diagrams; a proluvial body (an alluvial fan) has no type. A rock R whose marks are not written, on the data route or a bare R of the notation, takes its carbonate mark from a carbonate rock named (marble included) or effervescence and its gypsum mark from a gypsum rock named; another rock named has neither; a rock not named leaves them undecided.
• The stratozems. Of several stratified horizons in the body, the thickest names the type and the others are its features (RY 20 over RU 30 is BC02); a tie leaves the type undecided.
• The alluvial soils on the data route. The surface humus layer the key to horizons reads as RU or RY over a buried humus horizon is, for the types, the humus horizon AU or AY of the floodplain, and a layer with no diagnostic horizon the alluvium: AU over alluvium over Ab over alluvium is BA02, as its twin in the notation. The fix is in the reading of the alluvial types; key 2.1 and the divisions are unchanged.
• The BH of the ochric soils. The notation reads BH and BF as BHF, so the BH of BB01 and BB03 is read as a BHF of either kind, as Q15 does for CR07 and CS10; without it the two types could not be reached.
• The name of a chemozem. The book divides the chemozems by the kind of pollution, keeping the name of the original soil (p. 134). The type level is now built: soilKey’s code [CU:<code of the original soil>] and the names “Chemozems polluted with Cu, Ni, Co; original soil: Sod-podzolic” and “Хемоземы, загрязненные Cu, Ni, Co, по исходной почве: Дерново-подзолистые”. The pollutants are those recorded in pollutants for the layers of the X horizon, split on commas, semicolons and “and”; the original soil is the profile keyed again with the X masked (the X overlays the notation reader parses, AY+Xpb as well as AY+X, taken out, a layer that is only X dropped, and the contamination records removed), down to its type, and is in the trace (phase chemozem, an assigned step). An original soil with no division is named “…, division not provided by the Field Guide of 2008”; a masked profile that is a chemozem again leaves the original soil undecided ([CU:?]). Pollutants not recorded are named so and asked in $missing_data; an original soil undecided at its type or division is named so and makes the name provisional (original_soil: entries in provisional_because). This changes a result of 0.9.337 to 0.9.339: a chemozem had the division as its name.
• Contaminated soils outside trunk C. The X horizon is no horizon of the profile for step 5 of the key to trunks, so a contaminated soil of trunk A, B or D keeps its division and type (W+X over C.. is DA04, not a chemozem; the subtype x will name it). This changes a division result of 0.9.337. The X horizon counts at C.3b also when it lies on a surface horizon the thickest-horizon rule leaves out (O 15 over AY+X 10 over EL-BT is a chemozem, [CU:CA01]); in 0.9.337 to 0.9.341 it was lost.
• Doubles. Two formulas match one profile only where the rock names what the other formula leaves out: O-Rca is DA07 with DA05 its intergrade, W-Rca DA08 with DA06, O-Rcs DA09 with DA05, W-Rcs DA10 with DA06; the more specific names the type, as decided for trunk C.
• Every chapter 4 formula of trunks A, B and D, written as a profile in the Russian notation, reaches its own division and its own type, decided. One undesignated profile per division reaches its type through the key to horizons on the data.
• Profiles with a division and no type under the literal Q13 and Q14 (readings.yaml): TJ-TT over G, H at the top of a peat body, RU or RY on the floodplain, AY over Q, AO directly over BAN, PU over RY, O or W over D.
• The tests of the oracle of the keys read only the trunk and the division as undecided: an undecided type, or the original soil of a chemozem, is no answer of keys 2.2 and 2.3.
• A tie of recorded thicknesses at the surface, which leaves a type undecided, no longer asks for the depths in $missing_data.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02)

• The name of a chemozem: as designed: soilKey’s code [CU:<code of the original soil>], the pollutants as recorded, the original soil in the nominative after “по исходной почве:”, “pollutants not recorded” when none are, and the name provisional when the original soil is undecided.
• The rock under the dry peat (AA05): by p. 43 the hard rock R or loose material C may lie under the TJ body: TJ-TT over C is AA05, as TJ-TT over R; the C closes no other formula of the peat soils (TO-TT over C is AA01).
• After the review: a peat horizon starting 50 cm or more under the top of the peat body is TT, as the data route reads it; in trunk D the substrate directly under the O or W names the type and a deeper R is not tested; of several stratified horizons in a stratozem the thickest names the type; in the peat soils an R under the peat body does not block AA01 to AA04 (TO-TT over R is AA01), only AA05 requires R or C under the TJ; the chemozems follow Q23, a contaminated soil of trunk A, B or D keeping its division and type; a bare R of the notation takes its marks from the data as a C does, and an undesignated layer that names a rock and records no texture is undecided between the R and the C types.
• A named rock that is neither carbonate nor gypsum (granite, sandstone …) has neither mark: O over an R of granite with no effervescence recorded is DA05, decided.
• The readings of this release, accepted (readings.yaml): TT below the upper 50 cm of the peat body and a T of the notation as TO or TE by its botany; the substrate of the weakly developed soils (no horizon is loose rock, the mark from the origin or the texture, the legend’s “” read as , a proluvial body with no type, the marks of R from the rock recorded); the BH of BB01 and BB03 a BHF of either kind; the profiles the literal formulas leave without a type. Every reading in readings.yaml is again one of Hugo’s decisions.

After the review (2026-11-02)

• Fixes.
  • A grey matrix outside the bluish, greenish and neutral hues is reductic only with a positive dipyridyl test, recorded water saturation or a water table at the layer (or water above the surface), never the drainage class alone; an A is AG only in a bluish or greenish hue; Gr only with 5 % of redox features or less, 5-10 % with no location leaving Go and g undecided.
  • The A run at the surface continues only under a layer of A material, with more than 1 % carbon (a transition such as BA is no A designation); a layer that continues it is read by the subsurface tests too, and is undecided between the A and the subsurface code when both hold.
  • E: bleached is a moist value of 5 or more with chroma 2 or less; a lower chroma counts as lighter only at an equal or higher value; clay films common or many, or more clay than the layer above, exclude it; above a rock or a coarse layer with no fine earth only a bleached layer is an E.
  • Aso holds only on the list of p. 13 (the grisols reading of p. 193 is evidence), and only in a well aerated A (no functional redox features, no reduced matrix).
  • A BT that is also fersiallitic is FSt; a BT or FE with ferric nodules under 40 % is BTcn or FEcn, not Fe; -cn only on BT and FE, -j only on S, Sci and BT, on an angular (not subangular) structure.
  • TH never with jarosite or a pH under 4 (the sulfated U).
  • Jp under an A or LA in a young deposit as well as under a Js, before the S.
  • A G candidate is never narrowed away by a designation.
  • The andosol domain opens only on volcanic material recorded or on the andic or vitric properties holding; an Alox + 1/2 Feox under 2 % closes it.
  • Na only on a columnar, prismatic or coarse structure, or a massive one with 1 cmol+/kg of sodium or more; never undecided on a layer with no degraded structure.
  • Ach: the 3 % carbon in the top 10 cm of the A run, a lighter mineral layer below and a gradual decrease of the carbon, chernic() alone as the stand-in; the moist value stays 3.5 or less (the chapter, p. 126, Q17).
  • Ae not on a ploughed layer; M without a designation (a soft layer with no fine earth and its carbonates recorded, or an FAO Cr); OL in a profile written in capitals still the litter of the depth datum, and OF, OH as hints; a light layer under 1 % carbon under an O read as an E, not an A; a mineral designation with no data makes the layer mineral; OX with pH 5.5-6.5; Sci with pH over 6.5; a loss on ignition contradicted by the carbon flagged, and no A over 30 % carbon; an imperfectly drained site as a sign of water excess.

Hugo’s decisions after the review (2026-11-02)

• The revised readings (inst/rules/rp2008/readings.yaml): the designations narrowing the candidates (never a G away; BA is no A; OL, OF and OH in capitals; a mineral designation makes the layer mineral), the reductic matrix, the holorganic layers, the A run at the surface, Ach, Aso and An, BT and E, the intertropical horizons, Sn, FS, Sp, Sal and the andosol gate, the layers and materials, gypsum, silica and iron, the overlays and the features, as the fixes above read them.
• soilKey’s additions, accepted: Aso needs a well aerated A (no functional redox features, no reduced matrix, p. 13); tidal flooding, water above the surface or a subaqueous site count as a water table for a grey matrix; the A run continues only under a layer of A material; a light layer low in carbon is read as an E only directly under an O; an E is undecided when the BP below it is undecided; Fe only with ferric nodules of 40 % or more where a BT or FE also holds, otherwise BTcn or FEcn.
• Aso: with the list of p. 13 as the only test, the “imperfect when only one holds” clause of Q17 is empty: when the list of p. 13 holds, the grisols reading of p. 193 always holds too.
• The biomacrostructured A (d3): without biogenic_aggregates_pct, a crumb or granular structure with a recorded biological activity (worm holes, burrows, earthworms, a mull) reads the biomacrostructured A, flagged; a polyhedral, massive or other structure reads the A that is not; nothing recorded stays undecided.

soilKey 0.9.341 (2026-11-02)

France: the notation of the Référentiel pédologique 2008

The French Référentiel pédologique 2008 (AFES) writes its reference horizons in a notation of its own (LAch, NaBTg2, II Scag, E&BT, OFrzo) and defines its references by sequences of them. This release adds the reader of that notation, the catalogue of its horizons and marks, and the fields its references will read. Nothing is classified yet, so every classification is unchanged; the horizons on the data, then the registry entry with the references, follow.

• The notation reader (internal). A designation is read in a closed, case-sensitive vocabulary by the longest match (Snd is the silandic S, not Sn with d; Sal the aluminic S, not Sa with l; Kc, Xc, OXc and Femp are codes of their own) into its code, the listed code a variant belongs to (OF for OFr), its family, the overlays L, Na, Sa, the paleo π and J (LA, NaBT, πRT, JZtc), its suffixes as features with their reading on that host (c is indurated, but the mycogenic structure after OF or OH; x is fragic, but mixed rocks after D), a Roman numeral for a lithological discontinuity, the digits of a sub-horizon, transitions (A-S, and BC or ACk written without the hyphen) and juxtaposed volumes (E&BT). The writings the book uses for another code are read with a note (Lav, Vna, Vsa, OFz, OHz, OHmzo), and the old codes Ahs, FEm, FEmp and Ap as Aso, Fem, Femp and L. A designation it cannot read is left unread with a note; text that is not UTF-8 is read as Latin-1; nothing stops with an error.
• The notation of a profile is decided before any letter is read, since the RP shares A1, A2, Cca, G, Go and Gr with the CPCS 1967, with opposite meanings for A2 and Cca. A profile is in the RP notation when site$designation_system declares it, or when it has one code only the RP writes (OL, OF, OH, BP, LA, SV, FS, OX, RT, FE, Sca, Sal, Aca, Ach, Aso, Kc, Km, Js, Ys, Ztc, Mli, BTß, E&BT, NaBT …) or two kinds of code that it alone usually writes (Fe, K, Si, Hf, Hm, Hs, X, Y, U, V, Sn, ND, Sg, Cca, a BT with a lower-case suffix where another designation has lower case), and no symbol only the CPCS writes (A00, A0, (A), (B), Bfe, Can, an A2 used as an E) and no sign of the Russian notation. A profile with both is undecided: no designation is read as an RP code, and both readings go to the evidence. The country is never read. In a profile declared rp1995, or written with FEm, FEmp or Ahs, FE is the ferric Fe of the RP of 1995, not the ferruginous FE of 2008.
• Hints from other notations. A CPCS designation gives the RP codes of Annex 6 (A2 gives E or Ea, Cca gives Ck, K, Kc or Km, (B) the S horizons, with the slips of the table noted), and an FAO designation the codes of soilKey’s table of the FAO letters (Bt gives BT or FSt, Bw the S horizons, Oi OL). They are candidates for the identification on the data, never the RP code. The CPCS and Russian readers do not change.
• The catalogue inst/rules/rp2008/horizons.yaml: the 75 codes of the list of reference horizons, the 4 layers and 8 materials, 11 variants printed in the definitions and chapters (Fox, Fhy, the five kinds of OX, Gr, Go, Mma, Marg), the 7 O sub-horizons of Annex 1, 4 old codes and the B of the transitions (each with the name as printed, an English gloss, its family, the page and its class for the recognition), the 5 prefixes and 32 suffixes with the hosts the book lists, the writings of the book read as another code, the Annex 6 table and the table of the FAO letters. Every sequence of reference horizons printed in the 34 chapters and in Annex 1 (359 rows, 308 distinct strings) reads with no unknown code.
• New fields. Horizon: coarse_fragments_wt_pct and the four classes by weight gravel_wt_pct (graviers, 0.2-2 cm), cobbles_wt_pct (cailloux, 2-7.5 cm), stones_wt_pct (pierres, 7.5-20 cm) and boulders_wt_pct (blocs, over 20 cm); cec_method; redox_relict; anthropic_material and anthropic_material_pct; o_zoogenic; and the 21 fields that decide a reference horizon: fine_organic_matter_pct, biogenic_aggregates_pct, biogenic_aggregate_size, effervescence_hot, mgco3_pct, fe_total_pct, fe_ffe_pct, weatherable_minerals_pct, oxides_triacid_pct, clay_mineralogy, halloysite_pct, kaolinite_pct, smectite_pct, degradation_form, tongue_vol_pct, tongue_width_mm, lamellae_cumulative_cm, c_pyro_pct, pyrophosphate_index, s_total_pct and nodules_wt_pct. Site: valley_position, flood_frequency, poldered, lateral_bp_downslope, rp_anthropic_history, rp_qualifiers_recorded and parent_material_relation. The values rp, rp2008, rp1995, referentiel and afes of site$designation_system, the humus forms of Annex 1 in humus_form, and the origins colluvic, marine and transported of layer_origin.
• The description of cole_value now says what it measures: from moist at 33 kPa to oven dry, not from 1500 kPa.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02)

• Registry names (Q2): the system will be rp2008, namespace rp, aliases rp and referentiel; france, french and fr stay with the CPCS, so nothing changes for those who use it.
• The notation (Q9): declared, or one symbol only the RP writes, or two that it alone usually writes, with no symbol only the CPCS or the Russian notation writes; a mixed profile is undecided; the CPCS and FAO designations give hints through Annex 6, and the data decide; never by the country.
• The vocabulary (default 12): closed and case-sensitive, by the longest match; L, Na, Sa, π and J are overlays and the suffixes features; -c is indurated except in Kc, in Xc and after OF or OH; the variants of the book are read; FE is read as Fe only in an RP 1995 profile or with FEm, FEmp or Ahs.
• The new fields: the coarse elements by weight in the book’s four classes (Q11), the method of the CEC (Q12), relict redox features (Q13), the position in the valley, the floods, the polders and a BP downslope (Q14), the anthropic materials and history (Q15), the qualifiers recorded and the relation to the parent material (Q21), the zoogenic O and the humus forms (Q22), and the 21 fields that decide a reference horizon (Q23).
• The readings of the reader, accepted (inst/rules/rp2008/readings.yaml): ND, the nodular horizon, is only a likely sign of the notation, since databases write ND for “not determined”; the suffixes read only on the hosts the book lists completely; Ga, Ea and the V variants read as their code with a feature; the frozen mark * of the cryosols; transitions written without the hyphen; Roman numerals without a space and a numeral written alone; the old codes in any RP profile and as signs of the notation; the classes of the symbols beyond those of Q9; the CPCS A2 used as an E; the sign of the Russian notation; the patterns of Annex 6 and the table of the FAO letters; the writing of the sequences; Latin-1 text.

After the review (Hugo, 2026-11-02)

• Fixes.
  • V and X written alone are the vertic and peyric horizons, not Roman numerals (SV/V, O/X).
  • Ap (formerly L) inside a transition or written with a slash (Ap/C) is no sign of the notation and no longer makes the profile one of the RP of 1995.
  • A juxtaposition is a sign of the notation only as E&BT or with a part that is one: the New Zealand L&F and F&H are not.
  • L is a prefix only before the A, E, S, O, H, BT and BP horizons: LF, LC, LR, LM and LD are no RP codes.
  • -ho is a sign only on Aho, Acaho, Sho, Zho, THho and Xho with nothing after it, and the frozen * only a likely one, so the FAO runs Ahoc and A* do not make an RP profile.
  • A prefix written apart joins its master (Na BT, Sa A, p. 296), and “+” between two horizons is a juxtaposition (E + A, p. 315).
  • The (B)Ca row of Annex 6 is read, and A1g takes the A1 row.
  • Sub-horizons are numbered from 1: A0, A00, BT0 and S01 are no RP writing, and A00 keeps its Annex 6 hint OL.
  • Cs is C with -s, not a symbol of the CPCS only; an Australian A2e is no longer called CPCS in the explanation.
  • A mark written twice (Sgg, Rcaca) or -c or -m after a code that says indurated (Kcc, OXmc) leaves the designation unread, with a note; the suffixes of the book’s complete lists are read only on the codes it names (St, Ct, FSt; BTd, Sd; Ea, Ga, ga; noz and zo on OF and OH).
  • A transition keeps its sub-horizon digits and the features of each part.
  • Thin and narrow spaces, the Windows-1252 en dash, the capital Π, “pi” and the capital ẞ are read.
  • Pages corrected in the catalogue: Amg p. 12, Alu p. 78, OXfr p. 151.
  • The units of iron: fe_total_pct in % Fe2O3, fe_dcb_pct and fe_ffe_pct in % Fe, and the factor 0.6994 for the ratios of free to total iron (Sn 0.60-0.90, FFE over total iron above 0.20).
  • The two fields of the plan that were missing: lateral_cover_pct (horizon: the share of the ground an O horizon covers, Annex 1) and rp_paleo (site: the paleosolum terms declared, pp. 58-63).
• New decisions.
  • An FAO or USDA symbol beside an RP symbol leaves the notation undecided, as a CPCS or Russian symbol does: a B with a lower-case suffix (Bw, Bs, Bt …), Oh, Oi, Oe, Oa, Cr, AB or BA, and an Arabic numeral of discontinuity (2Cg, 3Bt). The RP transitions A-S, AS and BC are not such symbols.
  • In a profile written all in capitals the case is lost: the designations an upper-cased FAO, USDA or Canadian table also writes (OH, OF, OL, AH, AP, BT, BW, CK, CR …) stop counting as signs, while the codes only the RP writes in capitals (LA, LE, LS, LBT, SV, FS, OX, RT, FE, BP, ND …) still count. OH/AH/E/BT/C is not the RP; LA/BT, SV/V and A/FE/C are. This refines the first reading of the decision, under which only a declaration recognised a profile in capitals, which lost 48 of the 308 sequences of the book.
  • A lone g, the redox horizon written alone, is a likely sign of the notation.
  • site$designation_system is read by prefix: a value that starts with rp, referentiel or afes declares the RP (AFES 2009, RP08, Référentiel pédologique français), rp1995 or rp95 the RP of 1995. The Russian reader reads its own declarations the same way (a value that starts with kidpr, ru, rfg or rsc); nothing else in it changes.

soilKey 0.9.340 (2026-11-02)

Attachment: engine pieces for systems that are not keys

This release prepares the French Referentiel pédologique 2008, which is not a key: a soil is attached to one, two or none of its references, simply or imperfectly. It adds the generic pieces that system will use. No system uses them yet, and every other classification is unchanged.

• within_tolerance(value, threshold, direction, tol) compares a value with a threshold that has a tolerance. It returns “pass”, “imperfect” (beyond the threshold but within the tolerance), “fail” or NA. The edge of the tolerance band is inside it.
• Tolerance tables. A system lists its tolerances by kind of threshold (depth, pH, CEC, …), for one threshold or for every threshold of a kind. A threshold the table does not list is strict.
• A tolerant mode of the rule engine. A class can be evaluated twice, strictly and then tolerantly. In the tolerant pass, the predicates that read their thresholds through the new helpers see each listed threshold moved by its tolerance, in the direction that favours the class. Inside a none_of block the direction flips: “no BT within 120 cm” is read within 100 cm, not 140. The two verdicts give the degree: simple, imperfect, simple or imperfect (undecided between the two), undecided, or fail. The criteria that fail, pass only within tolerance, or are missing are named. The mode is off unless a system asks for it, and it belongs to that system: a predicate of another system, even one run from inside the tolerant pass, reads its thresholds as printed. So every other system runs as before. A class that passes strictly is simple. A threshold must be one known number; a tolerance table is always checked.
• The attachment combiner chooses the main name among the classes that attach. Exclusions come first, resolved together: only a class that is not excluded excludes another. The explicit precedence rules come next, then the degree (simple before imperfect), then an order list. A double or multiple name is written only for a listed group, in the group’s order. A class that could take the name once its data are known makes the name provisional, read at the best degree it can still reach. When nothing attaches, the name says so and the three nearest classes are listed. Codes in the rules that name no class are noted.
• A candidates slot in the classification result holds every class that may attach the soil, with its degree, rank and criteria. It is empty for every other system, and printing and the summary are unchanged unless it is filled.
• An additive level with no typical class. typical = NULL adds no “typical” label when nothing is named, for systems that have none.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02)

• The band edge counts inside. Against “no BT within 120 cm” (120 ± 20), a BT at exactly 100 cm is imperfect; at 99 cm it fails.
• Provisional. An undecided class that could take the name makes the name provisional.
• Exclusion by an undecided class. The excluded class stays a candidate, and the name is provisional. Classes that exclude each other are all kept, with a note.
• Precedence cycles. Pairs on a cycle are dropped, with a note; the degree and the order decide. When the pairs and the degrees disagree, a note says the order is a convention.
• Distance. The nearest classes are ranked by the number of failed criteria, then by the sum of the failures in tolerance units.
• Candidates. Undecided classes are always in the candidates; failed ones only as the nearest, when nothing attaches.

soilKey 0.9.339 (2026-11-02)

Russia: the types of the divisions CK to CT

The Russian soil classification (Field Guide of 2008) gains the types of the ten divisions CK to CT: 111 types, matched as the types of CA to CJ are (0.9.338). Every division of trunk C now has its types but the chemozems (CU), which have none. Every other classification is unchanged.

• The 111 types in inst/rules/kidpr2008/types/: CK 12 (solonetzes), CL 3 (solonchaks), CM 4 (hydrometamorphic), CN 9 (organo-accumulative), CO 11 (eluvozems), CP 13 (lithozems), CQ 10 (abrazems), CR 13 (agroabrazems), CS 19 (agrozems), CT 17 (turbozems). Each has soilKey’s code in brackets ([CK01] to [CT17], in the order of chapter 4), the Russian name as printed (two slips of the diagrams, Агрослонцы and Сухотофяно-литоземы, as chapter 6 writes them), an English gloss, the formula as the fixture of the formulas transcribes it, and the page.
• What the formulas test (Q14). The BCA under the solonetz horizon (BCAs,cs) is optional, in the solonetzes, the solonetzic abrazems, agrozems and turbozems. The hard rock R of the lithozems is tested, with its carbonate mark where the formula writes it without parentheses (Rca: the carbolithozems CP10, CP11). The gleyed substrate DG of the gley eluvozems is tested; the D of the others is not. The fragments of a TUR (TUR[SEL+ASN]) are tested.
• The fragments of a TUR (Q20) come from the notation or from the column turbated_fragments (“SEL;ASN”); with neither, the solonetzic types are undecided when the TUR has a high exchangeable sodium, and the TUR is not theirs otherwise.
• Near-identity readings (Q15): S over Q is a gley solonchak (CL01); a BT exposed or under PB is read as BI (CQ01, CR04, CR05); the BH of CR07 and CS10 is a BHF of either kind.
• Doubles. Two formulas match one profile only where one names what the other leaves out: O-EL-DG is CO02 with CO01 its intergrade (likewise CO04 and CO03, CO10 and CO09), AU-Cca-Rca is CP11 with CP06 its intergrade (likewise CP10 and CP09), PB-BM-BCA is CR09 with CR08 its intergrade.
• Every chapter 4 formula of CK to CT, written as a profile in the Russian notation, reaches its own division and its own type, decided, with and without its optional horizons, except CS16 and CS17 without their BCA: a thin TUR of solonetz fragments under P or PU over the parent material has no division (C.6а). One undesignated profile per division reaches its type through the key to horizons on the data.
• An exposed BT is an abrazem. At C.20 a BT at the surface, with no humus, organic, agro or eluvial horizon above it and the description starting at 0 cm, counts as BI. This changes a division result of 0.9.337 and 0.9.338: BT over C, which had no division (“not provided”), is now an abrazem (CQ), type CQ01.
• The secondary solonchaks. In the types of the halomorphic soils an S or SS laid over another horizon counts as the S of the formula: AY+S over C is CL03, AU+S over G or Q is CL01. The key to divisions sends these profiles to CL as before; outside CL an overlay stays a feature of its layer.
• The review of the types of CK to CT. On the data route the gleyed substrate of the gley eluvozems and the carbonate rock of the carbolithozems are read from the data (a gley colour or a redox sign; a carbonate rock named or effervescence), undecided when not recorded, so CO02, CO04, CO05, CO08, CO10, CO11, CP10 and CP11 are reachable there. The missing data of an undecided type name turbated_fragments when the fragments of a TUR are what is unknown. A formula that starts with SEL, S, a middle horizon or TUR leaves out a natural organic or humus horizon at the top that no formula of its division writes (a thin O or an AY over SEL-ASN is CK01) and is closed on one another formula writes (AU-SEL-BSN has no type). The post-solonetzic turbozems are tried with the agro types.
• Known limitation (as in 0.9.338): a description that ends in a horizon decides the type that needs nothing below it (O-EL with no substrate described is an eluvozem, PU-TUR a dark turbozem).

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02)

• Secondary solonchaks: the secondary solonchaks form over any profile (pp. 56, 105), so in the types of CL an overlay S is the S of the formula; the [ABC] of CL03 is any formed profile, not tested.
• Exposed BT: the near-identity of Q15 (a BT exposed is BI) holds at the key to divisions too, at C.20, with the guard of Q19.
• The fragments of TUR: every fragment a formula writes must be among those of the TUR (TUR[SEL+ASN] at the surface is no CT14); with no record of them, the type is undecided when the TUR has an ESP of 15 % or more and the TUR is not one of these otherwise.
• The five doubles (CO02 and CO01, CO04 and CO03, CO10 and CO09, CP10 and CP09, CP11 and CP06): the more specific names the type, the other is an intergrade.
• A division and no type: the profiles the literal rules leave without a type stay so, with the note of Q15: TJ over C (CN), V at the surface (CQ), O, T or PT over Q, AU-SEL-BSN, AU-ASN without SEL, PB or PU over BSN; a horizon foreign to the division under the plough is ignored (PB over BFM is CR01); CS16 and CS17 without their BCA have no division; on the data a carbonate layer directly under the plough is read as AJ.
• On the review (2026-11-02): in the turbozems every middle horizon of C.5 closes the formulas (P-TUR-BHF-C, PU-TUR-V-C and PU-TUR-BM-C have no type) and BT counts as BI in CT05 to CT08; a BCA is ignored in the formulas of CQ, CR, CS and CT that have a middle horizon and do not write BCA (BI-BCA-Cca is CQ01, PU-BM-BCA CS12, PU-BI-BCA CS13), as in CD; a plain TUR (CT01 to CT13) is no TUR of solonetz fragments; the G or Q of CL01 and CL02 lies directly under the S; CT13 takes PTR as well as PT; P directly over BCA is CS14. A surface horizon over a formula that starts with no surface horizon closes it when another formula of the division writes it (AU, AJ in CK) and is left out when none does (O, AY): AU-SEL-ASN is CK05 only, AU-SEL-BSN has no type. The BCA rule brings the double CR09 and CR08, CR09 naming the type.

soilKey 0.9.338 (2026-11-02)

Russia: the types of the divisions CA to CJ

The Russian soil classification (Field Guide of 2008) names its types by the formula of the profile, drawn in chapter 4. This release adds the type level for the ten divisions CA to CJ: 106 types, matched on the diagnostic horizons the divisions read. The other divisions keep the division as the name until their types follow. Every other classification is unchanged.

• The type level. After the division, classify_kidpr2008() matches the profile against every formula of the division with match_horizon_sequence(), three-valued. The profile is the one the divisions read: fresh litter left out, the profile under a deposit of 40 cm or less, the surface horizons by the thickest-horizon rule (p. 37), sub-horizons merged, transitions and small horizons left out, an overlay a feature of its layer. The type is the third level of the result, with soilKey’s English gloss in name and the Russian name in levels$name_native. An undecided type tried before the one assigned makes the name provisional; with none matched and some undecided, the name stops at the division and the warnings name the candidates.
• The 106 types in inst/rules/kidpr2008/types/: CA 27, CB 17, CC 3, CD 13, CE 7, CF 4, CG 3, CH 9, CI 20, CJ 3. Each has a code of soilKey’s in brackets ([CA01] to [CJ03], in the order of chapter 4, the natural types first), the Russian name as printed, an English gloss, the formula as the fixture of the formulas transcribes it, and the page. The test of each is the new predicate type_formula_kidpr().
• A combination no formula provides for keeps its division. The type is unassigned, a warning says the Field Guide of 2008 does not provide for it, and the three nearest formulas by edit distance are in that warning and in the trace (phase types_nearest).
• Intergrades. When two formulas match, the more specific names the type; the other is named in the evidence and in the warnings. Among the formulas of CA to CJ this happens only for AY-BEL-BM, where CD09 names the type and CD01 is the intergrade, and for AU-BM-BCA, where CD08 names it and CD03 is the intergrade.
• Fixes of the review. A tie or a missing thickness among the organic and humus horizons at the surface, or an undecided layer that could make one of them the thickest, now leaves the type undecided between its candidates (O 10 cm over AY 10 cm over EL-BEL-BT is CA01 or CA04); the type no longer follows one reading silently. On the data route an FAO transition (BC, B/C) or an FAO C layer between two horizons is passed over, as the divisions do: Ah-Eg-Btg-BC-Bg is CA05. A nearest formula that only a gap blocks says so in the note.
• The stratified body of the stratozems counts P and PU only over the first RJ, RY or RU, as the agro stratozems draw them (P-RY-D, PU-RU-D). This changes a division result of 0.9.337: RY 12 cm over P-EL-BEL-BT, or over PU-AU-BCA, is no longer a stratozem (BC) but CA17 or CI11.
• A V laid over another horizon is a feature of its layer for the key to divisions too. This changes a division result of 0.9.337: AU over G+V is a gley soil (CH, type CH04), not a humus-accumulative soil.
• The matcher takes a new option, agro_remnant = "thickest": under an agro horizon only the thickest natural horizon of the surface run stays in the sequence, as its remnant, and the others are features. The default keeps the old behaviour. A list of schemes may also be closed on a vocabulary per scheme.
• Every chapter 4 formula of CA to CJ, written as a profile in the Russian notation, reaches its own division and its own type, decided. So do the profiles without their optional horizons, except CA24 without its EL: P directly over BT is an agrozem. One undesignated profile per division reaches its type through the key to horizons on the data.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02)

• Closed formulas (Q13): every horizon that some formula of the division writes must be in the type’s formula when it is in the profile; a horizon foreign to the division is ignored and may name a subtype. Most specific first, agro before natural; a second match is an intergrade.
• BEL closes only where it is diagnostic: BEL blocks a formula that does not write it only in the types where page 44 makes it diagnostic (CA07, CA08, CA11, CA20, CA21, CD09). In every other formula a BEL is read as part of the passage from the eluvial to the middle horizon: it neither blocks the formula nor is required by it. So AU-EL-BEL-BT-G-CG is CA10, AY-EL-BEL-BT-BCA-Cca CA12, PU-EL-BEL-BT-G-CG CA23 and AY-EL-BEL-BM-C CD07, while AY-EL-BEL-BT-C stays CA04, AU-BEL-BT-C CA07 and AY-BEL-BT-C CA11. The key to divisions already keeps a BEL apart from the clay-illuvial chernozems: AU-BEL-BT is CA07, AU-BI is CI02, AU-BEL-BI has no division.
• What a formula tests (Q14): a horizon in parentheses is optional; BEL is required only where it is the diagnostic eluvial horizon (CA07, CA08, CA11, CA20, CA21, CD09); the g and q marks are expected, not required; the parent material is not tested; directly under passes over transitions and sub-horizons, with up to 15 cm with no diagnostic horizon between AU and BCA.
• No type (Q15): the division stays and the type is unassigned, with the nearest formulas and a note. The near-identity readings: the BF of CB05, CE06 and CE07, and the BH of the gley Al-Fe-humus soils, are a BHF of either kind; CJ01 takes BCA or CAT; CH02 takes O, T or H over G-CRM.
• A layer with no horizon on the data, between two horizons of a formula, may be a transition or loose rock: the type is undecided, with its candidates, not unassigned. Up to 15 cm of it between AU and BCA is still passed over.
• E and EL in CB and CE: an EL counts as an eluvial horizon with E. It fills the E of a formula (O-EL-BHF-C is CB07, O-EL-CRM-C is CE05) and blocks the formulas without E (no podbur CB01, no CE01); with no formula with E, the type is unassigned (Q15).
• BCA in CD: like BEL, a BCA neither blocks a formula of CD that does not write it nor is required by it (p. 85): AY-BM-BCA-Cca is CD01, AO-BM-BCA CD02; CD08 and CD13 still win where they match.
• Overlays at the division key: only a V that is the horizon of its own layer is a middle horizon; a V laid over another horizon is a feature (G+V under AU is CH04). The overlays S and X count as before.
• The stratified body: P and PU count only over the stratified horizons.
• The readings of the types (readings.yaml): the T of a formula takes TO and TE; a natural humus or organic horizon of the surface run that a formula does not write stays out of the closure, and under the plough the thickest natural horizon is the remnant; an overlay (S, X or V over a host) is a feature for the types, not a horizon of the formula; at equal specificity the agro types come before the natural ones, then the order of chapter 4.

soilKey 0.9.337 (2026-11-02)

Russia: the registry entry, the trunks and the 27 divisions

The Russian soil classification (Field Guide of 2008) joins the registry as kidpr2008 (aliases kidpr, russia, ru2008), experimental and opt-in: classify_all() does not run it unless asked, so every other classification is unchanged. This release keys the five trunks (key 2.2) and the 27 divisions (key 2.3) on the diagnostic horizons of the profile, from the Russian notation where the profile is written in it, else from the key to horizons on the data (0.9.335-0.9.336); the types and subtypes follow.

• classify_kidpr2008() and make_kidpr2008_example() (one small profile in the Russian notation per division). The result names the division (or the trunk), with an English gloss in name and the Russian of the book in levels$name_native; a profile that is not a soil (trunk E), a thin layer of loose rock over hard rock, and a combination of horizons the Field Guide does not provide for are noted in the warnings, the division unassigned.
• The keys flattened (inst/rules/kidpr2008/key.yaml and divisions/): each trunk and division is a first-match entry whose gate is the conjunction of the conditions of the book’s path to it (less what an earlier entry of the list excludes), written with the path (C.4а-C.5а-C.6б-C.7а); the steps of the key to divisions are written once and named by the gates. The trunks E, D, A, B, C; trunk A: AB, AA; trunk B: BA, BB, BC; trunk C: CP, CL, CU, CQ, CO, CN, CT, CR, CS, CC, CF, CG, CH, CE, CJ, CK, CB, CA, CD, CI, CM; trunk D: [DA], the division the book does not code.
• The predicates (internal, _kidpr): a horizon present, starting the profile, the surface horizon, directly over another, below another, the profile made only of some horizons, hard rock within 30 cm, a TUR over 40 cm, the peat body, the deposit at the surface, the stratified humus body, a soil horizon within 1 m, a river floodplain on modern alluvium, volcanic ash and the contaminated horizon X, three-valued, reading the frame of identify_horizons(pedon, "kidpr2008") once per classification.
• A literal walker of keys 2.2 and 2.3, with its own reading of the profile, is the test oracle of the flattened lists: on every combination of the tested horizon-presence space they agree once the repairs below are applied, and every difference from the literal key is one of them. A sample of that space is also classified end to end as pedons in the Russian notation, and a set of common soils of Russia on the data route. Every profile formula of chapter 4 reaches its own division.
• The level labels Trunk and Division (EN, PT) in the app and the report; the app offers the 27 examples; the site attributes frost_regime and designation_system, and landform, landform_element, parent_material and contaminated, name the system that reads them.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02)

• Levels and registry (Q1, Q2): trunks and divisions now, types and subtypes later; trunk E is not a soil (rock outcrops, technogenic surface formations, a deposit that is not humified over a buried soil), with a note, and the chapter 8 groups are not keyed; id kidpr2008, namespace kidpr; the codes of the book, [DA] for the uncoded division of trunk D.
• Precedence (Q9): the printed order of the steps and of their alternatives (C.7: BFM, BPL, CR, CRM, BMK, ASN or BSN; C.8: BHF, BT, BM); C.19в before C.19а (P with AY and PU with AU are organo-accumulative soils); C.6б over C.6а when BFM, BPL, CRM, CR, CRH or BMK is in the profile (P-G-CRM is a gley soil); an agro horizon with no natural remnant on alluvium is an agrozem (p. 124).
• Gaps (Q10): only those the book’s types prove are repaired: AY and AK at C.2, PT and PTR at C.19а, AK at C.19в, a TUR over 40 cm tested at C.6 and a TUR at the surface counted at C.4, trunk D taking an S alone over loose rock, AY or AO directly over G to the gley soils; every other combination with no exit is “not provided by the Field Guide of 2008”, the division unassigned, with a note.
• The surface, the sources (Q11, Q12): the agro horizon, else the thickest of the natural organic and humus horizons that start the profile (a W of 5 cm or less over another horizon is a feature); division names from the chapter 4 headings, the index and key forms as synonyms.
• Truncated, turbated, synlithogenic, peat, chemozems (Q19-Q23): a middle horizon at the surface counts only when the description starts at 0 cm; the turbozems need a TUR over 40 cm; trunk B takes only what one of its divisions takes (a floodplain with alluvial material; BAN; a stratified humus body of 40 cm or more, P and PU counted), and the deposit of step 2 is the material at the surface that is not a horizon formed in it; the peat body of more than 50 cm sums the contiguous organic layers, H, PT and PTR included, a description ending in peat at 50 cm or less undecided; the chemozems only at C.3б, after the lithozems and the halomorphic soils, X from the extremely hazardous category within 30 cm.
• soilKey’s readings, accepted (readings.yaml): V and CRH count among the middle horizons of C.5 (the types CI04, CI05, CI14, CI15 have no other); a profile C.6 gives no answer (an agro horizon on ASN or BSN, the agro-solonetzes CK09-CK12) goes on to C.7; the peat T of the key’s lists includes TO and TE; the surface S or SS of C.3 starts within 10 cm; loose rock belongs to the deposit only over a buried soil or an organic or humus horizon (TPO and the deposit of the data always), and a buried soil directly under a thin deposit is the soil keyed; a valley, alluvial plain or delta landform leaves the floodplain undecided; P or PU at C.19а is read as present; each gate leaves out the exclusions an earlier entry of the list supplies, so that an undecided class makes the one after it provisional. Every reading in readings.yaml is now one of Hugo’s decisions.

After the review (Hugo, 2026-11-02)

• Fixes.
  • TPO, and the deposit the key to horizons finds on the data, belong to the deposit at the surface: TPO or a raw deposit over 40 cm on a soil is trunk E, not a soil.
  • A layer the data leave undecided between peat horizons counts in the peat body, and step 6 no longer asks for the decomposition or the von Post value it does not need.
  • A layer the data leave undecided between soil horizons is a soil horizon for step 1, so such profiles are no longer provisional on trunk E.
  • A layer in which the key on the data finds no diagnostic horizon may be a transition: it no longer proves that the profile has no soil horizon, so the canonical plinthosol is no longer trunk E. Rock, TPO and a deposit still do.
  • FAO and WRB transitions (AB, BC, E/B and the like) are passed over as those of the Russian notation are. A chernozem Ah-AB-Bk is a humus-accumulative soil on both routes.
  • A missing depth or thickness leaves the step that needs it undecided: hard rock, a surface salt horizon or a contaminated layer of unknown depth, and the thickest-horizon rule with a thickness missing. No R warning any more.
  • The texts of the site are read as words. A terrace is no floodplain, glaciofluvial material and outwash are no alluvium, and outwash or washed sand is no volcanic ash.
  • The peat body is more than 50 cm, as the book says. classify_kidpr2008() says it needs a PedonRecord when it is given something else.
  • A description that starts with fresh litter at 0 cm starts at 0 cm for a truncated soil.
  • The test oracle reads the profile on its own. Its space now holds TPO, the deposit of the data, transitions, layers with no diagnostic horizon and an O thicker than the humus horizon under it.
• New decisions.
  • BAN is formed in volcanic ash by its definition, so BAN alone makes the volcanic soils: H-BAN-C is BB, by the notation or by the key on the data.
  • Step 5 of the key to trunks reads the profile after the thickest-horizon rule, as C.2 and C.19 do. O over a thinner humus horizon is only O, a weakly developed soil, and O with W needs no repair.
  • Every ploughed soil of the iron-metamorphic (CC) and light-humus carbonate-accumulative (CJ) divisions is an agrozem (CS), or an agroabrazem (CR) under PB, with or without a remnant of the natural horizon (pp. 83, 99). P-AJ-BCA, P-AY-BFM and P-AJ-BM-BCA are agrozems, PB-BFM an agroabrazem. This replaces the reading of an agro horizon directly over BFM or BMK.
  • On the data route an FAO or WRB transition counts as a transition only when the key to horizons finds no diagnostic horizon in it. AE read as AEL and EB read as BEL keep their horizon, so the grey forest soil keeps its division (CA06).
  • On the data route a layer designated C (C, Cg, 2Ck) in which the key to horizons finds no diagnostic horizon is loose rock, one of the readings key position 66 lists.
  • C.14 reads “directly under”, as C.13 does. The key prints “under”, but the text of the gley soils (p. 92) puts G directly under the organic or humus horizon and leaves out a profile with any other mineral horizon, and the text decides. O-BI-G is not provided by the Field Guide of 2008.
  • BMK stays out of C.5: AJ-BMK-C is not provided.

soilKey 0.9.336 (2026-11-02)

Russia: the diagnostic horizons on the data

The Russian soil classification (Field Guide of 2008) identifies the diagnostic horizons of a profile by a key of 66 positions (section 2.1). This release runs that key on the recorded data, so that every layer gets its Russian horizon where the profile is not written in the Russian notation, with soilKey’s WRB diagnostics standing in where a field descriptor of the key is missing. Nothing is classified yet, so every classification is unchanged; the registry entry with the trunks and divisions follows.

• The key 2.1 (internal; the horizon identification identify_horizons() dispatches to once the registry entry exists). The 66 positions in the book’s order, each a question on the layer and on the whole profile (the layers above and below, the depth of a boundary, frost in the profile). It reaches the 50 horizons, the modifications AV, BH and BF, the peat as rock TT, the features u, tr, rh, r, ao, e, el and ca, and no diagnostic horizon (position 66). The overlays S, X and V are kept beside the horizon of the layer; one left undecided leaves only the overlay undecided. Two answers the key gives no exit (a mixed layer neither TUR nor tr; continuous effervescence with cutans and no white-eye) leave the layer undecided between their neighbours. In a profile dark from a dark rock, a middle horizon gets the feature u and goes on at 31.
• One row per layer: the horizon and its modification, overlays, features, small horizons (e, el, ao, r, rh), the route (notation, data or both), the path of the key in the book’s notation, the evidence, the WRB diagnostics that stood in and the fallbacks used, and, when undecided, the candidates and the attributes that would decide it. A layer written in the Russian notation keeps its horizon; the key runs on its data too, and a reading that differs goes to the evidence. Designations in other notations give hints only; fresh litter is no horizon; hard rock is R.
• The readers (internal): the colour words of the key in Munsell, the Kachinsky gradations of texture and the clay ratio, acid or not, the salts and the pollutants, the organic matter, the decomposition, the carbonates, frost, ploughing and the surface deposit, each three-valued and noting the fallback it used. soilKey’s cambic horizon also stands in for the transformed structure of BM, and its andic properties for the volcanic ash of BAN; a layer under pH(H2O) 7.0 is read as holding no free carbonates when no effervescence is recorded, and a layer with a particle-size analysis, CaCO3 or a mineral bulk density but no carbon as mineral.
• The fixes of the review. A grey layer under an organic layer, or one continuing the surface horizon, is a humus horizon only when it looks like one (not gley or olive, not massive, single-grained or stratified, not frozen, darker than the parent material), so the CRM, CR or G under the O of a cryozem or a gleyzem, a pale soil’s BPL and layered alluvium are no longer read as AY or AJ. The light horizon is compared with the middle horizon under the BEL. The argic stand-in gives no cutans to massive layers, carbonate layers or layers outside the clay maximum; the solonetz structure comes only from a columnar structure recorded in the layer’s run; the carbonate neoformations not recorded are read by calcic(), protocalcic_properties() or the carbonate maximum of the solum. The Soviet plough layer (Apakh, Ap with a Cyrillic p) and a clear plough boundary are read; the site’s mixing depth no longer makes the plough layer mixed. With equal values the lower chroma is the lighter layer; CRM is dull (chroma 3 or less) with a cryogenic structure; BMK needs the effervescence; a rich granular AU is no AH; a film colour must be brighter than the parent material; AK must be strictly the darkest; a natural surface layer lighter than the humus horizon under it is a deposit (criterion 3 of position 8); Russian texture words are read in either order.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02)

• Without the notation (Q4): the key runs on the attributes; where a field descriptor is missing a soilKey WRB diagnostic stands in, flagged: spodic() for the iron films of BHF, argic() for the cutans of BT and BI, calcic() for the carbonate neoformations of BCA, the structure of natric_horizon() for ASN and BSN (the exchangeable sodium never decides). An undecided question follows every branch: one outcome gives the horizon, several leave it undecided with the candidates.
• Colours (Q5): dry Munsell, one cut-point per binary choice of the key (dark: value 4 or less, chroma 2 or less; grey: chroma 3 or less in 10YR, 2.5Y, 5Y or N, 7.5YR only at chroma 2 or less; whitish: value 7 or more, chroma 2 or less); dry value = moist value + 1 when only the moist colour is recorded, flagged; the gley, olive and solonetz colours read moist, the gley set the whole gley chart.
• Organic matter (Q6): humus = 1.724 x OC; LOI from loi_pct, else 1.724 x OC; decomposition from peat_decomposition_pct, else von Post (H7 or more, H4 or less), else the rubbed fibre (under 17 %, 40 % or more); between them undecided.
• Texture (Q7): the Kachinsky gradations from phys_clay_pct or texture_class_ru, else the USDA classes in order of fineness, one step one gradation, flagged; BT against BI by the clay ratio of 1.4 to the overlying humus or eluvial horizon.
• Salts and pH (Q8): soluble_salts_pct, else the EC of chapter 9 (ECe 16 dS/m, EC 1:5 2 dS/m), else a salt crust or efflorescences recorded at the surface; pH(KCl) alone acid under 5.0, not acid from 6.2.
• The surface (Q11), the sources (Q12): a horizon starts at the surface at the top of the mineral soil, under the agro layers or under the deposit; exact boundary values follow the key’s inequality (e 2 cm or less, O 10 cm or less, el 5 cm or less, salts over 1 %, a humified deposit of 40 cm a horizon, a raw one a feature).
• Ploughing (Q18): the Russian index, else the plough suffix p in the layers from the surface, else a tilled land use with an abrupt boundary within 40 cm; a designated profile with no plough mark is natural, a profile with no designation and no land use undecided.
• TUR (Q20), the deposit (Q21), peat (Q22), X (Q23): TUR from foreign_fragments_pct (80 % or more) or the site’s mixing depth, flagged; the deposit is the mineral material over a buried soil, or a layered deposit at the surface, never a humus horizon formed in it; TO and TE in the upper 50 cm of the peat, TT below, TJ by the value mesophilic; X from contamination_hazard, the site’s contamination without a category undecided.
• Frost (position 26, the review): frost_regime first; else frozen ground in the profile (ice, a temperature of 0 C or less, the permafrost sign, the FAO frozen suffix, cryoturbation) yes; else the Koppen climate (D with c or d, ET, EF yes; A, C, D with a or b, BWh, BSh no; BWk and BSk undecided); else the soil temperature regime (cryic, gelic, pergelic yes; mesic or warmer no; frigid undecided); else a mean annual air temperature over 5 C no; nothing recorded, undecided. Latitude does not decide; the route is flagged.
• After the review (Hugo, 2026-11-02): no free carbonates under pH(H2O) 7.0 when no effervescence is recorded; carbonate neoformations not recorded read as the carbonate maximum of the solum (calcic() or protocalcic_properties() passing, or the layer with more carbonate than every layer above, at least as much as those below except the parent material, and 1 % or more), not for the parent material, undecided otherwise; Koppen BWk and BSk fall through to the soil temperature regime and the air temperature; a film horizon neither BFM nor fading is BHF; GY, G, BG, B and PB above chroma 1 need a structure or a redox sign as 2.5Y does; plant residues count above 5 %; LOI 10-15 % with a crumb or granular structure is AU; the clay maximum is 90 % of the highest argic clay; the site’s mixing depth is undecided when ploughing is.
• Litter (Hugo, 2026-11-02): an FAO Oi or L is fresh litter only in a run of such layers that starts the description and is 5 cm thick or less (a run with no recorded thickness stays litter); thicker, or lower in the profile, it is an organic layer the key reads on the data, so a raised bog described Oi/Oe is peat and 40 cm of Oi over a gleyed layer is T. The Soviet A00 stays litter.
• The peat body of positions 41 and 44 (the review): only weakly decomposed peat, without H, PT or PTR, as the key writes it (the 51 cm body of the organogenic trunk keeps them).
• Gley in 2.5Y (the review): with 2.5Y at chroma 2-3 a G needs a massive or structureless structure or a recorded redox sign (mottles, redox features, a dipyridyl test); the rest of the gley chart (N, and GY, G, BG, B, PB at chroma 1) suffices by colour.
• Defaults: the agro horizon by the colour of position 19 (PU dark; P grey as Q5 reads it, chroma 3 or less in 10YR, 2.5Y, 5Y or N, with a dry value of 5 or more, so 10YR 5/3 is P; PB the others; 15a allows a brown tint); V by slickensides, wedge-shaped peds and clay 30 % or more within 80 cm, one or two of the signs the feature v; continuous effervescence by effervescence_extent, else CaCO3, else the effervescence class; white-eye = soft concretions; field observations not recorded are absent, measurements not recorded leave their question undecided; field-only criteria are evidence.

soilKey 0.9.335 (2026-11-02)

Russia: the notation of the Field Guide of 2008

The Russian soil classification (Field Guide of 2008) writes its horizons in a notation of its own (AY, EL, BEL, BTg, BCAs,cs) and names its types by profile formulas in it. This release adds the reader of that notation, the catalogues of its horizons and features, and the fields its horizon key will read. Nothing is classified yet, so every classification is unchanged; the horizon key on the data, then the registry entry with the trunks and divisions, follow.

• The notation reader (internal). Each designation is read into its horizon and features: small horizons written alone (O-e-BHF-C), bracketed features ([hh], [e-hf], [akl], also on a host: AJ[akl]), turbated mixtures ([AY, EL]tr, TUR[SEL+ASN]), a remnant in parentheses ((EL)), the modifications BH, BF and AV, the rock flags (CG, CQ, DG), the rock marks (C, C”, C, C”“, C=, C..), a lithological layer (2BM, IIBT), sub-horizons (BT1, BT2), transitions (AUBM, AU/BM, BC), a buried horizon in brackets ([AU], [BTg]) and an overlay written after a”+” (AU+S). A row it cannot read gets the hints of the FAO letters, and each reading it had to make is noted (a note after a space, a trailing “?”, a bracket that is no feature of the catalogue read by its parts). Text that is not valid UTF-8 is read as Windows-1251, the Cyrillic code page, when it can be, else left unread; nothing stops with an error.
• The catalogues inst/rules/kidpr2008/horizons.yaml and features.yaml: the 50 diagnostic horizons (Russian name as printed, an English gloss, the chapter 3 group, the path of the horizon key, the page), the modifications AV, BH and BF, the alias PC, the rock symbols C, D, CLM, R, TT and TPO (technogenic surface formations), the marks and the four tokens of the chapter 6 formulas (AM, AKL, PY, TR); the 64 features of section 3.2 and the three indices only the chapter 4 lists use (w, x, rx), with their aliases, their host horizons and the host-bound forms of the lists (ELf, Th, Tote, AUlc-BCAmc …). Every profile formula of chapter 4 (275) and of the chapter 6 correlation (266) parses with them, with no unknown token; 478 of them are recognised as Russian with no declaration (the other 63 are written only with letters other notations share).
• The WRB cryic conditions read a profile declared in the Russian notation by its permafrost sign, not by an f, which is ferruginated there (ELf); no other profile changes.
• The split of a run of features written without commas (internal, the formula parser) takes linear time; a long run that could not be split took seconds to minutes.
• New fields. Horizon: phys_clay_pct and texture_class_ru (the Kachinsky texture), loi_pct and peat_decomposition_pct (the organic horizons), plant_residues_pct, uncoated_grains_pct, effervescence_extent, sulfide_odour, slickensides_size and cryoturbation (positions of the horizon key), foreign_fragments_pct and turbated_fragments (turbated layers), contamination_hazard and pollutants (the contaminated horizon X). Site: frost_regime. The value mesophilic of peat_moor_type, and the Russian names of site$designation_system (kidpr, kidpr2008, ru, ru2004, ru2008, russian, russia, rfg2008, rsc2004).

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02)

• Notations (Q3): only the Russian notation of 2004/2008 gives the profile type: declared in site$designation_system, or recognised by an index only it writes (AY, AU, EL, BEL, BHF, BCA, PU, TUR …) or a sign only it writes (the permafrost sign, a rock mark, a comma-separated feature list, a bracketed feature), once the Cyrillic letters that look like Latin ones are read as Latin; never by the country. FAO letters (Ap, Bt, Bs, Bk) only give hints to the key on the data, and so does the Soviet notation of 1977 (A0, A1, A2, Bca); in a profile with its numbered tokens, AO is the Soviet A0. In a profile written all in capitals, the indices an upper-cased FAO designation could spell (AY, EL, BEL …) count while the rows that read as FAO ones (AP, BW, BTG) are not more numerous, and the capitals after an index are then features (BTG = BT + g); PU, PT, TUR, SEL, TO … always count. AH, AK, AO, BH and BF count only where the case of the letters is kept, or beside an index no FAO master starts (P, G, T …).
• The notation (defaults 8 to 13): the Cyrillic look-alikes are folded and the permafrost sign is read in both its forms; the aliases tr = tu, ek = ko, agr = ag, ae = ael, cs = as and PB = PC are read as the first; Tote is TO with te; the tokens AM and AKL of chapter 6 are read; a lithological layer is numbered in Arabic or Roman figures; a layer may hold a horizon and an overlay S, X or V; small horizons are marked rows, sub-horizons are merged and transitions are not diagnostic; a feature string without commas is read by the longest match, with a note where it could be read otherwise (hi, gr, md, mr, rh, ur, yu, hh, ff, rr, rx, hf, agr); a feature written alone is a small horizon only where the text allows it (e, el, ao, ek, r …, not g, s, ca or v); CG, CQ and DG are a gleyed or quasi-gleyed rock, not a G or Q horizon; the printing slips of the keys are corrected.
• The new fields (Q6, Q7, Q20, Q22, Q23, Q24): the Kachinsky texture (phys_clay_pct, texture_class_ru), the loss on ignition and the degree of decomposition, the fragments of a turbated layer and their horizons, the hazard category and the pollutants of the contaminated horizon, mesophilic peat, and the seven descriptors that decide positions of the horizon key (uncoated grains, the extent of the effervescence, the frost regime, plant residues, the smell of hydrogen sulfide, the size of the slickensides, cryoturbation). The descriptive ones (skeletans, the place and layering of the clay films, the mineral admixture, carbonate pendants, an erosion mark) are not added: the notation or the evidence carries them.

soilKey 0.9.334 (2026-11-02)

Russia: the engine for profile formulas

The Russian soil classification (Field Guide of 2008) names its types by profile formulas (“O-EL-BEL-BT-C”) and its subtypes by a list of features per division. This release adds the generic pieces it needs; no system uses them yet, so every classification is unchanged. The Russian notation, horizons, divisions and types follow.

• Profile formulas. An internal parser reads a formula into slots: alternative codes (“RY(RJ)”, “CG (CQ)”, and soilKey’s ”O|T|H”), optional horizons in parentheses, features (typical, or required where they name the type, as Rca), the role of each slot (surface, middle, parent), buried profiles ([ABC], {ABC}), turbated compositions (TUR[AU+SEL+ASN]), small horizons ([e-hf], e), rock flags (CG, CQ, DG) and rock marks (C, C”, C, C”“, C=, C..). Given a vocabulary of horizons and features, an unknown token stops it with its name.
• match_horizon_sequence() matches the identified horizons of a profile against a formula: TRUE, FALSE or NA when an undecided layer could change the answer, with the slots matched, the slots missing, the extra horizons and the edit distance. A horizon fills a slot by its code or by an overlay (an AU with an S overlay fills an S slot); surface and agro codes the formula does not name stay out of the closure unless closure_surface = TRUE, so a natural remnant under the plough does not block an agro type. Internal helpers run a division’s schemes, pick the most specific match (the others noted as intergrades) and, when none matches, rank the nearest schemes by edit distance.
• identify_horizons() gives the reading of every layer as a diagnostic horizon (code, overlays, features, small and transitional rows, buried profiles, route, verdict, evidence, the candidates when undecided), by the system’s own identification; a system without one stops with an error, as every system does in this release.
• A walker of horizon keys (internal): a key written as a tree of questions answered TRUE, FALSE or NA.
• An additive level (internal): after the type, every listed feature that passes is named, in list order. The Hungarian subtype properties keep their own code.
• print() of a result lists the classes of one level together (“CA01 Podzolic > g gleyic, y tongued”), so the Hungarian subtype and variety properties are no longer chained with “>” as if each were below the one before.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-02)

• Undecided key questions (Q4): an undecided question follows every branch; one outcome gives the horizon, several leave it undecided with the candidates.
• The surface horizon (Q11): the agro horizon, else the thickest natural organic or humus horizon starting at the surface or under a deposit under 40 cm; the others are read as features.
• Templates (Q13): a type’s formula is closed on the vocabulary of its division: a horizon that appears in any scheme of the division must be matched when present; a horizon foreign to the division is ignored. The most specific scheme is tried first, agro before natural; when two match, the more specific wins and the other is an intergrade in the trace.
• Formulas (Q14): a horizon in parentheses is optional; terminal symbols are tested only where they name the type; “directly under” skips transitional rows and sub-horizons, with an allowed gap (up to 15 cm between AU and BCA).
• No type (Q15): when no scheme matches, the name stops at the division and the trace lists the nearest schemes.
• Subtypes (Q16): every listed feature that passes is named, in list order; typical when every one is FALSE; provisional when some are undecided, which are listed; a feature already written in the type’s formula is not named again.
• Also accepted: sub-horizons are merged (BT1, BT2 = BT); transitions are not diagnostic; small horizons are marked rows, not diagnostic horizons; one layer may hold a horizon and an overlay (S, X, V).

soilKey 0.9.333 (2026-11-01)

France: the 276 subgroups of the CPCS 1967

classify_cpcs1967() now keys a pedon to its subgroup, the fourth and last registry level, subgroups. A subgroup the text names in full stands alone (“Podzols humo-ferrugineux”, “Chernozem modal”); one it names by an adjective follows its group (“Rankers, à mor”, “Sols ferrallitiques moyennement désaturés en (B) typiques, Faiblement appauvri”). name is now the deepest level.

• Subgroups. The text names most subgroups by a secondary process or by one side of a measure; soilKey’s readings are listed in readings.yaml.
  • A subgroup the data cannot decide leaves the name provisional.
  • When no listed subgroup of a group fits (27 groups have no modal), the name stops at the group and the trace says why; 22 groups have no subgroups.
  • The other subgroups whose tests pass are noted in the trace as “intergrade vers …”, and a brown soil with hydromorphic signs only below its (B) as a “faciès hydromorphe”.
• Five new fields: humus_form (site: mull, moder, mor, hydromull, hydromoder, hydromor, anmoor, tourbe), caco3_active_pct, coarse_sand_pct, fine_sand_pct and gibbsite_pct (horizon).

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-01)

• Inventory: the main text of the AFES edition, 276 subgroups; I/16 has no common subgroups; the two peat subgroups under each peat group (XI/111 to XI/132); “Sans horizon B” is XI/221; VII/115 and VII/413 included; IV/22 takes the subgroups of IV/21. Codes: the class and the text’s three digits (I/111 under I/11).
• Order: the printed order, modal last; a subgroup that splits the group by a measure after those of a secondary process, and a composite subgroup before its parts.
• Hydromorphy: signs (redox features above 0 %, mottle colours, a reduced matrix, or a g or G where no mottles are recorded) in a layer starting within 100 cm; also a water table within 1 m for “à nappe”; pronounced signs or concretions within 50 cm for the vertisols; signs from 50 cm and none above for II/142.
• Shallow profiles: by the profile type: hard rock directly under the A for the lithosols, C or R within 45 cm for IV x13 and 50 cm for VII/411, a (B) on hard non-calcareous rock within 50 cm for VII/115.
• Vertisols: “vertiques” with slickensides common at most; self-mulching with fine structure to 10 or 20 cm.
• Salt and sodium: EC 4 dS/m or more, exchangeable Na 6 % of the CEC or more, within 100 cm.
• Rendzinas: a very strong effervescence or 10 % active carbonate (V/112), under 10 % carbonate with 15 % coarse fragments (V/114), a dry climate (V/115).
• Crusts: an encroûtement is a recorded accumulation (5 % secondary carbonates, 5 % more carbonate than the layer below, or a Ca of the notation); a croûte is a cemented layer.
• Isohumic soils: vertique = protovertic or a coarse prismatic (B); à B textural = the textural B of VII/12; rubéfié = the reddened B of class IX.
• Brunified soils: the measures decide (allophane, clay index, pH of the B); the colour words of the A2 and the humus are descriptions, except the ashy A2 over an ochre B of VII/124.
• Podzolised soils: Bh and Bfe by the notation, then the colour; deep hydromorphy below the base of the B with none above it.
• Classes IX and X: the accepted IX/X table; “faiblement rajeuni” at 3 % weatherable minerals; “faiblement remanié” by the evidence of the reworked groups; X/322 by a dark brown B, pH under 4.5 and gibbsite (or Ki under 1.0).
• Class XI: the peats by their pH (5.5), else the moor type; anmoor by a C/N under 20, hydromor by the humus form, else a C/N of 20 or more; XI/321, 322, 341 and 342 by the morphology.
• Class XII: XII/21 by the surface structure, then the EC route; XII/23 by the Na of the first B; XII/114 by a thionic horizon, or pH under 4 with jarosite or sulfidic S.
• After the review (Hugo, 2026-11-01):
  • the sub-class IX-1 takes the nearly saturated tropical sands of IX/114 (8 % clay or less to 100 cm, under 1 % OM in the A) whatever their base saturation, and IX/114 reads V 80 % or more in the larger part of the B;
  • an encroûtement needs a recorded accumulation, not soilKey’s calcic horizon alone;
  • the yellow and brown subgroups of classes IX and X come after the subgroups of a process, and the thick calcic brown soils (V/213) before the brunified rendzinas;
  • IX/213 and IX/222 take any hydromorphic sign;
  • a subgroup left undecided before the assigned one makes it provisional, as at the other levels;
  • the detailed readings soilKey made where the plan was silent are kept, marked as soilKey’s in readings.yaml.

soilKey 0.9.332 (2026-11-01)

France: the 101 groups of the CPCS 1967

classify_cpcs1967() now keys a pedon to its group, a third registry level, groups, for example “Podzols”, “Sols lessivés” or “Sols ferrallitiques fortement désaturés en (B) typiques”. The subgroups follow.

• Groups. The text defines most groups by a profile type, a colour word or a property with no number; soilKey’s readings are listed in readings.yaml.
  • A group the data cannot decide leaves the name provisional.
  • When no group of a sub-class fits (VIII-1, VIII-2, XI-1 have no default), the name stops at the sub-class and the trace says why.
• Two new fields: patterned_ground (site: polygons, circles, stripes, mud boils, hummocks, palsas) and ice_form (horizon: ice lenses, wedges). They decide the groups of the cold-desert and permafrost soils; not recorded, those groups are undecided.
• The FAO and USDA suffixes i, e and a of an O horizon give the fibre class of a peat when no fibre content is recorded.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-01)

• Deposits and erosion (I-1, II-4): the origin recorded for the material under the A within 50 cm, else the parent material; anthropic, volcanic, alluvial, colluvial, aeolian, in that order; no origin recorded, the erosion group.
• Classes I to IV:
  • the lithosols of the deserts: hard rock within 10 cm;
  • II/23 allophanic first (pH NaF 9.5 or more, or Alo + 1/2 Feo 2 % or more), II/22 only on a calcareous rock;
  • II/31: under 1 % OM and an arid climate;
  • the vertisol groups by the structure of the top 15 cm (self-mulching is angular, massive undecided);
  • IV/21: base saturation of 50 % or more in the (B), pH 6 or more without it.
• Classes V and VI:
  • V/13 cryptorendzinas first (dolomite), then V/11 rendzinas (no (B)), V/12 the others;
  • V/22 (OM above 20 % on hard carbonate rock), V/23 (fine polyhedral A, CEC of the clay 50 or more), V/21 the others;
  • the isohumic groups by the mean OM of the top 20 cm (chernozems above 5 %, chestnut soils 3 % or more, marron soils 1 % or more).
• Classes VII and VIII:
  • the leached soils: the clay index (largest clay of the B over smallest of the A) above 1.4 with 5 % clay more; films recorded as none or few rule it out;
  • the sod-podzolic soils: an A1 of 25 cm or more and tongues;
  • one colour table for the podzolised soils (ashy = albic, pale = one Munsell value above the A1 and the B, ochre = 10YR to 5YR with chroma 6, brown = chroma 4 or less);
  • boreal podzols (Köppen Dc or Dd, or latitude 50 or more) before alpine ones (ET or EF below 60 degrees, or 1,500 m).
• Classes IX and X:
  • IX/12 leached, IX/13 impoverished, IX/11 the others, by the clay index, the thickness of the A, the C and the clay films;
  • IX/21: a calcium reserve within 100 cm, or a (B) with V 95 % or more and pH 7 to 7.5;
  • class X in the order humic, leached, impoverished, reworked, rejuvenated, typical (X/24 read as reworked).
• Classes XI and XII:
  • the peat groups by the fibre class over the greatest thickness;
  • XI-3 in the order 35, 36, 34, 31, 33, 32 (the specific groups first);
  • XII-2 in the order solodised, Solonetz, Solonchak-Solonetz.
• After the review (Hugo, 2026-11-01):
  • the deep gley of the amphigley starts at 80 cm; in a declared FAO notation, g is a pseudogley and l the fringe of a gley;
  • a water table recorded as none, or not recorded, makes a stagnogley of a profile with its morphology (undecided when not recorded);
  • VIII/13 allows an A2 under 5 cm and no Bh over 3 cm; a site at 1,500 m or more below 60 degrees is alpine;
  • V/31 is the AR or ACR profile, its thinness a description; a plain B of the CPCS notation is a textural B when clay is not recorded;
  • ice-wedge polygons are a strong ice segregation; XII/23 without a pH is undecided; a columnar B is compact;
  • names carry soilKey’s insertions in brackets: “[possible]” for III/21-22 (the text prints “nul”), “[remaniés]” for X/24.

soilKey 0.9.331 (2026-11-01)

France: the 35 sub-classes of the CPCS 1967

classify_cpcs1967() now keys a pedon to its sub-class, a second registry level, subclasses, for example “Sols ferrallitiques fortement désaturés en (B)” or “Sols brunifiés des climats tempérés humides”. The groups and subgroups follow.

• The climate. The sub-classes rest on the pedoclimate where they can. A climatic sub-class needs its climate and the morphology of one of its groups.
  • The climate is read from a new site field, koppen_climate (the Köppen code), else from the USDA soil temperature and moisture regimes, else from the latitude.
  • With no climate recorded, the soil falls to the class’s non-climatic or temperate sub-class, and the trace says so.
  • A second new field, mean_annual_precip_mm, is recorded but decides nothing yet.
• The other sub-classes read the profile:
  • the external drainage of the vertisols, from the slope or the landform;
  • the organic matter of the andosols;
  • gypsum and carbonate in the A for the calcimagnesic soils;
  • hydromorphy reaching the A2 or the top of the B for the podzolised soils;
  • the base saturation of the B for the sesquioxide and ferrallitic soils;
  • the peat and the anmoor for the hydromorphic soils;
  • the structure for the sodic soils.
• The app and the report label the new level “Subclass”.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-01)

• Climate: Köppen first, then the USDA regimes, then the latitude. With no climate, the default sub-class. The isohumic soils, whose four sub-classes are all climatic, stay undecided unless the property test of VI-1 holds.
• Classes I and II:
  • I-2 cold deserts and I-3 hot deserts;
  • II-2 humic: 5 % OM or more in the A, pH under 6.8, not arid;
  • II-3 xeric: a dry climate, under 2 % OM, no calcareous accumulation.
• Classes III and IV:
  • III-1: a slope under 2 % or a flat landform; nothing recorded leaves it undecided;
  • IV-1: OM above 10 % in the A over 25 cm.
• Classes V, VII and VIII:
  • V-3 gypseous first, then V-1 carbonated, then V-2;
  • VII-4 tropical, VII-3 boreal and VII-2 continental, each with the morphology of its groups;
  • VIII-3 hydromorphic, then VIII-2 cold.
• After the review:
  • every Köppen climate falls in one isohumic sub-class (VI-1 Cf, Dfa, Af, Am; VI-2 the other D, BSk, BWk, E; VI-3 Cs; VI-4 BSh, BWh, Aw, As, Cw);
  • VII-1 and VIII-1 hold under a temperate climate or none recorded; under another recorded climate, a soil without the morphology of the climatic sub-class is undecided rather than named temperate.
• Classes IX to XII:
  • IX-1 when base saturation is under 65 %;
  • X by the thickness-weighted base saturation of the (B), at 40 % and 20 %;
  • XI-1 peat, XI-2 anmoor;
  • XII-2 by the sodium route.

soilKey 0.9.330 (2026-11-01)

France: the twelve classes of the French soil classification (CPCS 1967)

classify_cpcs1967() keys a pedon to the twelve classes of the French soil classification of 1967 (Commission de Pédologie et de Cartographie des Sols, Classification des sols), a system of its own beside the other national systems. make_cpcs1967_example() gives one profile per class. The names are French, as the text writes them, in name and levels$name_native. The sub-classes, groups and subgroups follow.

• An order of classes. The CPCS gives no key. soilKey keys the classes in an order built from the text’s statements of precedence: I sols minéraux bruts, III vertisols, XII sols sodiques, IV andosols, VIII sols podzolisés, X sols ferrallitiques, IX sols à sesquioxydes de fer et manganèse, XI sols hydromorphes, II sols peu évolués, VI sols isohumiques, V sols calcimagnésiques, VII sols brunifiés.
• The old French notation (Aoo, Ao, A1, A2, A3, (B), B, Bh, Bfe, Bt, Cca, Can, Cs, Cn, Sa, g, G, R, a Roman numeral for a change of parent material), declared with site$designation_system = "cpcs" or recognised by its own symbols, beside the FAO letters. In a profile without designations, soilKey’s diagnostic horizons stand in for the profile type.
• The class tests read organic matter as 1.72 × organic carbon, with depths from the top of the first mineral horizon:
  • the intensity of hydromorphy and halomorphy that makes classes XI and XII;
  • Ki (or the CEC of the clay) for the ferrallitic soils, read in the larger part of the B;
  • the podzolic B by its C/N;
  • the andic properties with a (B);
  • the sharp or gradual fall of organic matter that separates the calcimagnesic soils from the isohumic soils.
• In the Pro app, the CPCS is a national system of its own; the level is labelled “Class”.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-01)

• The order of the classes above. Class XI excludes permafrost soils (they stay in class II); the sesquioxide soils exclude the isohumic soils.
• Class XI: peat (30 % OM, 20 % in sandy material) over 40 cm of the top 80 cm; 8 to 30 % OM over 20 cm on a gley; or hydromorphic layers over most of the profile from the base of the A1 to 100 cm. A deep gley alone does not count, and a mottle that is not recorded is absent.
• Class XII: EC above 7 dS/m in every horizon to 100 cm, or Na above 10 % of the CEC with a massive or columnar, compact structure. Na only; clean sands and gypsum alone excluded.
• Conventions: OM = 1.72 × C; depth zero at the top of the A1; ranges read as in the SiBCS; data first, the notation where the data do not decide.
• Names: French in both name fields.
• After the canonical profiles (the 44 WRB, SiBCS and USDA examples keyed under the CPCS):
  • class IX’s individualised iron is a reddened B (5YR or redder, chroma 4) or iron concretions, a yellower B only under a tropical climate;
  • the gradual fall of OM of class VI is read at a third, and class V drops its own fall test (the isohumic soils are keyed before it);
  • the EC of class XII is read in the solum;
  • the cracks of class III are 0.5 cm, as soilKey reads the WRB.
• Classes I, II and IV:
  • class I has traces of OM, 0.5 % (1.5 % in the top 3 cm);
  • class II has permafrost, or an AC profile with more than traces;
  • an AC soil with the chemistry of class V and a source of Ca or Mg is calcimagnesic unless a recent deposit or recent erosion is recorded;
  • class IV needs the andic properties over 30 cm, a CEC above 25 (the thickness-weighted mean of the andic A and (B)) and a (B).
• Classes III and VIII: the CPCS’s own vertisol reading (slickensides to 150 cm, 30 % clay in the (B)); the podzolic B by criterion 2 (OM above 0.5 %, C/N above 14), or an ashy A2 without a B.
• Classes X, IX, V, VI and VII:
  • X: Ki of 2.0 or less, else a CEC of the clay of 16 or less;
  • IX: Ki above 2, base saturation above 50 % and individualised iron;
  • V: no B, pH above 6.8 and Ca + Mg above 90 %;
  • VI: a gradual fall over half the solum, OM minima by texture, S/T of 50 % or more in the upper horizons and 80 % in the B (p. 39);
  • VII: the remaining soils with a B or (B).
• Supporting readings: the ashy A2 is albic material; in an undesignated profile, the B is read from soilKey’s diagnostics.
• After the reviews:
  • the notation gives the profile type (B, (B), A2), and the recorded data the properties: a g with 0 % mottles recorded is not a hydromorphic layer;
  • class VII takes the soils with an A2 and no B;
  • a peat excludes the mineral classes keyed before class XI, and class I takes no organic layer (an organic layer counts as more than traces for class II);
  • the Canadian, New Zealand and Australian letters keep their own meanings (f iron, v vertic, z frozen), and the recorded data come before the Ca, Cs and Cn of the notation.

The other systems do not change.

soilKey 0.9.329 (2026-11-01)

Japan: the soil phases of the Comprehensive Soil Classification System of Japan (the CSCJ now complete)

classify_cscj2011() now gives the soil phases of chapter VIII in ClassificationResult$phases, beside the class name, as classify_scsj2017() does. With them, the CSCJ 2011 is complete in soilKey: 10 great groups, 27 groups, 116 subgroups, 381 soil series groups and the phases.

• Temperature phase: from the soil temperature, else the USDA regime, else estimated from the mean annual air temperature plus 2 C, as the CSCJ says.
• Man-made phases, with the CSCJ’s names:
  • a fill is named by its texture or, for a kuroboku fill, its humus class, and by its kind of soil or material (多腐植質黒ボク土盛土造成相, 粗粒質浚渫土砂盛土造成相, as the text’s examples);
  • the Reformed soils: the fill over the original soil’s group (細粒質低地土／粘土集積赤黄色土造成相).
  • a fill in the plough layer alone takes no phase (chapter IX, step A);
  • a fill with none of the five kinds that the materials name is keyed on its own and named by its great group when 25 cm or more, by its texture alone when thinner;
  • a kuroboku fill on other material is a natural combination (chapter IX, step D; also on #133): the text’s example keys as 腐植質下層低地アロフェン質黒ボク土 with the phase 腐植質黒ボク土盛土造成相.
• No forest phases: the CSCJ has none.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-01)

• The air temperature plus 2 C for the CSCJ temperature phase, marked as estimated.
• A fill’s name puts the texture word, or the humus class of a kuroboku fill, before the soil kind; for the Reformed soils, the fill’s texture and great group over the original soil’s group.
• A kuroboku fill is a natural combination in the CSCJ only: it does not make the soil Man-made (on #133 and merged up the stack).
• A fill with none of the five kinds: 25 cm or more is classified on its own and named by its great group; a thinner one is named by its texture word, when decided.

The SCSJ 2017 and the other systems do not change.

soilKey 0.9.328 (2026-11-01)

Japan: the 381 soil series groups of the Comprehensive Soil Classification System of Japan

classify_cscj2011() now keys a pedon down to its soil series group (土壌統群), the CSCJ’s lowest category, for example “fine-textured Reddish Argic Red-Yellow soils” / 細粒質赤色粘土集積赤黄色土.

• Lists. Each subgroup has its own ordered list, drawn from the text’s vocabulary:
  • bedrock, a gravel layer or a pan layer within 60 cm;
  • the texture of the subsurface;
  • peat, alluvial or kuroboku layers in the subsoil, and the non-allophanic feature;
  • the humus classes;
  • the mineral layers and fibre of the peat soils;
  • the base-rich dark surface horizon;
  • wetness.
• New horizon attributes: texture_class_jp (the Japanese texture classes, codes or words) and hardness_yamanaka_mm (soil hardness, for the pan layer).
• App and report label the new level “Soil series group”.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-01)

• Series groups are named by their term, in lower case, before the subgroup’s name.
• Bedrock, gravel and pan layers:
  • bedrock and the gravel layer are measured from the soil surface;
  • a gravel layer is 20 % or more in either record; with no record, there is no gravel layer;
  • hardness not recorded means no pan layer.
• Texture:
  • it is read from texture_class_jp;
  • without it, clay of 15 % or more is fine, and medium vs coarse stays undecided;
  • it is read on the horizon of 15 cm or more with the largest overlap of 20 to 40 cm; a tie goes to the larger part of the section, then to the thicker horizon;
  • with no subsurface, no texture class is met.
• The base-rich dark surface horizon is undecided where liming is recorded.

The SCSJ 2017 and the other systems do not change.

soilKey 0.9.327 (2026-11-01)

Japan: the 116 subgroups of the Comprehensive Soil Classification System of Japan

classify_cscj2011() now keys a pedon to its subgroup (chapter VI), named by its word before the group’s name, for example “Argic Calcaric Dark Red soils” and 粘土集積石灰性暗赤色土.

• Subgroups shared with the SCSJ are its generic gates, read by the CSCJ edition under CSCJ names with the same depths and features. Within them, the Andic subgroups have P retention as their only substitute, and the Endoaeric Lowland Paddy soils read the CSCJ’s yellowish brown.
• New or different:
  • the Cumulic Fulvic Andosols, by the brown polyhumic surface horizon over 50 cm within 60 cm;
  • the Low-humic Allophanic Andosols;
  • the Dark Red groups’ Argic and Haplic subgroups;
  • the Brown Forest soils in the CSCJ’s order, with Aquic by either wetness, Eutric on every subhorizon at pH 6.5 and the new Terrace subgroup.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-01)

• Terrace by recorded words for Pleistocene deposits, negations taken out, a Holocene or alluvial terrace and a rock not counting; nothing recorded means not.
• Eutric as written, with no liming clause.

The SCSJ 2017 and the other systems do not change.

soilKey 0.9.326 (2026-11-01)

Japan: the 27 groups of the Comprehensive Soil Classification System of Japan

classify_cscj2011() now keys a pedon to its group (chapter VI): for example the Fulvic Andosols, the Calcaric, Dystric and Eutric Dark Red soils, and the Brown Lowland soils.

• Groups shared with the SCSJ are its gates, read by the CSCJ edition under CSCJ names.
• New groups and readings:
  • the Fulvic Andosols, by the brown polyhumic kuroboku surface horizon: layers with the kuroboku feature, a moist value and chroma of 3 or more and 4 % carbon or more each, 30 cm in 40 cm, with a weighted mean of 6 % or more;
  • the Calcaric and Dystric Dark Red soils;
  • the Brown Lowland soils, by the CSCJ’s own yellowish-brown colour, which leaves out 5YR.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-01)

• The brown polyhumic horizon adds up the layers that meet it, with no allowance for layers that fail between them.
• The Brown Lowland soils use the CSCJ’s yellowish brown.
• Where liming is recorded, the Dystric and Calcaric Dark Red groups are undecided (the soil keys to the Eutric group, provisional).
• The Non-allophanic Andosols by the key alone.
• The Volcanogenous Regosols’ undeveloped horizons leave buried horizons out, in both Japanese systems (the SCSJ change is on #130 and merged up).
• With no subsurface section, a criterion on its subhorizons is not met, in both systems (on #129 and merged up).

The appendix’s typos “Fuluvic” and “Volcangenous” are written Fulvic and Volcanogenous. The other systems do not change.

soilKey 0.9.325 (2026-11-01)

Japan: the Comprehensive Soil Classification System of Japan, the ten great groups

classify_cscj2011() keys a pedon to the ten great groups of the Comprehensive Soil Classification System of Japan, First Approximation (Obara et al. 2011, NIAES), a system of its own beside the SCSJ 2017. make_cscj2011_example() gives one profile per great group. Names are the English names of the text’s appendix 2, with the Japanese ones in levels$name_native. The 27 groups, 116 subgroups, 381 soil series groups and the phases follow.

• Shared code, the CSCJ’s own limits. The diagnostics the two Japanese systems share are read with the SCSJ code, by the CSCJ edition:
  • the argic horizon by the CSCJ’s clay increase (the WRB 2006 values);
  • the immature kuroboku feature with P retention as its only substitute;
  • the heterogeneous fill of the Man-made soils by the CSCJ great groups, without the SCSJ’s Regosol-group rule;
  • a fill that keys as Andosols is a combination that occurs in nature (chapter IX, step D), so it does not make the soil Man-made.
• Podzols before Andosols, as the CSCJ keys them.
• New great group: the Dark Red soils, by a dark red subsurface (the new colour word) or an origin from limestone or calcareous deposits with a base-rich subsurface.
• The CSCJ’s Red-Yellow soils, without the SCSJ’s base-status criterion.
• In the Pro app, the CSCJ is a national system of its own.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-11-01)

• The soil surface, which the CSCJ does not define, is read as in the SCSJ.
• The CSCJ’s own argic limits.
• The subsurface section excludes the plough layer, as in the SCSJ.
• The Dark Red colour is that of the thickest B horizon in the subsurface section (a buried B included), else the first B below it, else the thickest layer of the section.
• Limestone or calcareous deposits come from recorded words or 40 % CaCO3 or more; nothing recorded means not. Liming leaves a high base status undecided.
• The Podzols: one horizon may meet both the analysis and the morphology criteria; the single parent material is read on the bleached and accumulation horizons.
• The Red-Yellow soils’ 25 cm are those of one horizon, in the CSCJ and in the SCSJ alike.
• A kuroboku fill is a natural combination in the CSCJ only: the text’s example of a humic kuroboku fill on alluvium keys as an Andosol, not as a Man-made soil. The SCSJ still reads every recorded fill as not natural.
• Decided for the later parts:
  • a Japanese texture-class attribute;
  • the series-group names with their term first;
  • the air temperature plus 2 C for the CSCJ temperature phase;
  • the texture layer in 20 to 40 cm and the non-allophanic test by the key.

The other systems do not change; the SCSJ changes only in its Red-Yellow soils’ count (also on #129).

soilKey 0.9.324 (2026-10-31)

Japan: the soil phases of the Soil Classification System of Japan

classify_scsj2017() now gives the soil phases of chapter V in ClassificationResult$phases, a new field (kind, code, English and Japanese name, basis), which print() lists. The class name is left as it is.

• Temperature phase: frigid, mesic, thermic, hyperthermic, from the mean annual soil temperature or the USDA soil temperature regime.
• Man-made phases: mixed-layer, cut and fill phases for the other great groups, the fill named by its materials; the gley, wet, gravelly or plain phase of the Artifactual soils, named by the artificial material; the fill over the original soil, with the same endings, for the Reformed soils.
• Forest phases, on forest or grazing land: the 1975 forest soil type when recorded (new site field forest_soil_type, read in any spelling and for the other 1975 groups by their moisture letter); otherwise the three development phases of the Podzols on the key’s own pairings (new horizon attribute leached_spots), and the seven moisture phases of the other forest soils from soilKey’s reading of their descriptions.
• A phase is given only when it is decided: a test earlier in its order that the data leave undecided gives none.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-10-31 and 2026-11-01)

• The phases sit beside the class name, not in it.
• The temperature phase reads the soil temperature or the USDA regime, with no estimate from the air.
• One man-made phase for the Man-made soils: gley before wet before gravelly; the Reformed soils take it too, as the supplement’s example.
• The forest moisture phases: the recorded type, else rules from the structures, undecided when ambiguous. Slightly wet: no O, a crumb A of 25 cm or more, a B without blocky, nutty or granular structure. Moderately dry: nutty structure in the lower A and the upper B. Moderately moist, drier type: granular upper A or nutty lower A, no crumb required. Angular blocky is nutty.
• The 1975 types of the other groups are read by their moisture letter.
• A thin fill is named by its materials; mixing counts only below the plough layer; land consolidation alone is not a cut.
• Undecided data give no phase.

Other systems do not change.

soilKey 0.9.323 (2026-10-31)

Japan: the 120 subgroups of the Soil Classification System of Japan

classify_scsj2017() now keys a pedon to the subgroups of chapter III: 120 under the 26 groups (Haplic, Humic, Cumulic, Brown-humic, Thapto-humic, Thapto-upland, Endofluvic, Aquic, Peaty, Anthraquic, Albic, Epi-gleyed, Thionic, Strong and Mottled, Reddish, Andic, Podzolic, Eutric, Calcaric, Granitic, Para-lithic …). Each is named by its word before the group’s name, in English and in Japanese (levels$name_native; the generic classifier now fills {parent} in the native name too).

• New horizon attributes: ph_h2o2 (potential sulfuric material), peat_moor_type (high-moor, transitional or low-moor peat) and artefacts_organic (mainly organic artificial material).
• The subgroups also read the humic and polyhumic surface horizons, the buried humic layer, the buried non-kuroboku upland soil, the paddy reverse gley layer, jarosite, carbonates, the site’s landform and groundwater depth, and the parent rock.
• Hugo’s decision (2026-10-31): the mottle class ‘contains’ of the Strong Gley Fluvic soils, for which the text gives no figure, is 5 % or more.
• On paddy land the Aquic subgroups do not read the paddy horizons’ mottles as groundwater wetness, as the groups do; the groundwater gley layers are adjacent gley horizons reaching 75 cm.
• Hugo’s decisions (2026-10-31): the Brown-humic colour is a moist value and chroma both 3 or more (chapter VI); a paddy greyed horizon within 30 cm rules the Aeric Pseudogley soils out; the Endoaeric brown layer is below the plough layer and the surface horizons; the Podzolic Brown Forest soils read the podzolic accumulation horizon as the text gives it (its colour suffices).
• Corrections to the shared definitions: “at A to B cm” windows no longer pass a layer that may start above A; the humic surface horizon starts at the soil surface and reads gaps and the end of the description as possible; a buried humic layer may be several horizons; an H horizon with carbon but no kuroboku data is peat material; a buried plough layer is not the plough layer; Japanese drainage classes are read.

The readings are in inst/rules/scsj2017/readings.yaml. Other systems do not change.

soilKey 0.9.322 (2026-10-31)

Japan: the 26 groups of the Soil Classification System of Japan

classify_scsj2017() now keys a pedon past its great group to the 26 groups of chapter III, among them Podzolic, Regosolic, Gleyed, Wet, Non-allophanic and Allophanic Andosols, Fluvic Paddy, Gley, Gray, Brown and Regosolic Fluvic soils, Argic and Cambic Red-Yellow soils, Stagnogley and Pseudogley soils, Magnesian and Calcareous Eutrosols, and Volcanogenous and Sandy Regosols, Lithosols and Terrestrial Regosols. Each has its English and Japanese name.

• New horizon attribute exchange_acidity_y1 (the exchange acidity y1 of the non-allophanic kuroboku feature, not read on farmland). The groups also read Sio (si_ox_pct), Alp/Alo (al_pyro_pct, al_ox_pct) and exchangeable Ca and Mg.
• The gley layers are subdivided as the text does (groundwater gley layers reach 75 cm or deeper, taken together).
• Man-made soils: a fill and the soil under it that both key to Regosols are compared by their groups; a part of a profile keyed on its own is read as complete.
• Corrections to 0.9.321: a layer with the kuroboku feature no longer also has the immature one (an ash layer that is certainly one of the two still counts for the Andosols); a fill keeps the material it records, so a fill of the same material is read as part of an ordinary profile (chapter VI, the fill phase); colour words decided by value or chroma alone; a run’s certain depth and the end of the description read in the depth tests.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-10-31)

• The podzolic accumulation horizon’s criterion (2) is read for the soil, as its verb says (as in 0.9.321).
• “Several gley layers” are adjacent gley horizons taken together; an oxidised layer separates two gley layers.
• On paddy land the paddy horizons’ mottles are not the groundwater wetness feature of the Wet Andosols and Gray Fluvic soils.
• The mottle class “contains” (the Strong Gley Fluvic soils, next release) is 5 % or more.
• Later (2026-11-01): the Volcanogenous Regosols’ undeveloped horizons leave buried horizons out.

The readings are in inst/rules/scsj2017/readings.yaml. Other systems do not change.

soilKey 0.9.321 (2026-10-31)

Japan: the great groups of the Soil Classification System of Japan (2017)

A new, experimental and opt-in system: the Soil Classification System of Japan (SCSJ 2017) of the Japanese Society of Pedology, Fifth Committee for Soil Classification and Nomenclature. This release keys the ten great groups of chapter II with the definitions of chapter IV; groups, subgroups and the soil phases follow, then the Comprehensive Soil Classification System of Japan (2011) as a system of its own.

• classify_scsj2017() keys a pedon to Man-made soils, Organic Soils, Andosols, Podzols, Fluvic soils, Red-Yellow soils, Stagnic soils, Eutrosols, Brown Forest soils or Regosols. Each level gives the official English name of the SCSJ table and, in levels$name_native, the Japanese one (a new column that the generic classifier fills for any system whose classes carry name_native).
• make_scsj2017_example() gives one made-up profile per great group.
• The key reads the Japanese horizon notation of the Soil Survey Handbook (H, O, A, E, B, C, G with Go and Gr, R; p, g, t, w, s, h, ir, mn; a 2 or II prefix; a trailing b), colours by the colour words of the text, the subsurface control section (20 to 60 cm), paddy land from site$land_use or site$flood_irrigated, and the recorded origin of the layers (fill, volcanic ejecta, alluvial deposits).
• New horizon attributes: phosphate_absorption_coef (mg P2O5/100 g; the kuroboku feature needs 1500 or more), active_al_test (the Japanese field active-aluminium test, -, +-, +, 2+, 3+) and n_value (physical immaturity). The dipyridyl test is the existing childs_test.

Hugo’s decisions (2026-10-31)

• The SCSJ 2017 complete (great groups, groups, subgroups and phases), then the CSCJ 2011 as a system of its own.
• English names with the Japanese ones beside them.
• The phosphate absorption coefficient is a new attribute; P retention (85 %) or Alo + 1/2 Feo (2.0 %) replace it when it is not measured, as the text allows, and the field active-aluminium test after them.
• Paddy land is read from the land use; with none recorded the paddy horizons are undecided, not absent.
• Podzols: the bleached horizon must lie above the podzolic accumulation horizon, the sequence of the great group’s concept.
• The subsurface section (20 to 60 cm) counts the horizons with 5 cm or more inside it.
• An undesignated layer of 20 % carbon or more is peat on a poorly or very poorly drained site and a forest floor on any other; undecided without a drainage class.
• In the forest-floor notation (L, F, H), an H under L or F is the humus layer of the floor, not peat.
• Later (2026-11-01): the Red-Yellow soils’ 25 cm are those of one horizon, not added up over separate horizons; with no subsurface section, neither base-status criterion is met; a gravel layer (in either record) that reaches into the subsurface section cuts it at its top.

The choices where the text is silent are in inst/rules/scsj2017/readings.yaml. Other systems do not change: the 44 canonical profiles key as before under WRB, SiBCS and USDA, and the Canadian, Australian, New Zealand and Hungarian examples as before.

soilKey 0.9.320 (2026-10-30)

Australia: Queensland’s SALI read from its site reports and its soil chemistry API

Queensland’s Soil and Land Information system (SALI) publishes about 21,000 sites with the surveyors’ ASC label and laboratory data, anonymously and under CC BY 4.0 (State of Queensland). Its morphology exists only in a per-site report (a PDF), so the reader reads the PDF. The data are not shipped with soilKey.

• fetch_sali() downloads the site layer (Queensland Spatial, MapServer layer 101: the sites with an ASC label and laboratory data), then per site the report (SALI4320) and the samples with their results from the SALI soil chemistry API (OData). It is resumable, waits between requests, retries with a backoff, stops on any login, key, terms or firewall page, and talks only to the layer and, per site, to the report host and the API.
• read_sali_pedons() reads the folder into pedons. The report is read from the coordinates of its words (pdftools, in Suggests), and each row of its morphology table is translated into the coded horizon of the NatSoil API and read by the NatSoil reader’s own code, the laboratory samples too, so the two Australian panels are read alike. The provenance has a row per horizon for the morphology and one per laboratory value, naming its source and method. The site fields it adds (sali_*) are listed in site_attribute_spec() and inst/ATTRIBUTES.md.
• benchmark_sali() gives the metrics of benchmark_natsoil() (which it calls), with a table by surveyed order and one by the ASC edition the report cites. sali_citation() gives the CC BY 4.0 attribution.

Hugo’s decisions

• Reports over 150 KB are not downloaded (cap_bytes = 150e3): those with embedded site photographs are aborted at the cap, marked and not tried again.
• MIR predictions (method codes ending in _MC2, _MC91, _MQ01, _MQ02 and the like) are used only where nothing was measured for that attribute in that horizon. The provenance marks them as predictions (source predicted_spectra, a note naming the MIR codes), and the evidence grade of such a pedon is B. The pilot left them out. MIR methods the NatSoil reader has no code for are read by the property their name gives: 15C2_CEC (“Cation exchange capacity - MIR QLD Calibration 1”) as the CEC, 6B4 (total organic carbon) as organic carbon and 15J2 as the effective CEC.
• The lab table printed in the report is used only when the API holds no samples for the site’s observation; the provenance says which of the two each value came from.

The readings (the pilot’s, kept)

• Sites labelled “Unclassified” are left out; observation 1 of a site is read.
• The label is read by position (order, suborder, great group, subgroup), each name matched, case-insensitive, to the 3rd edition. A name the 3rd edition does not have stays NA; “No Available Class” is ZZ and “Class Undetermined” YY. The edition the report cites is kept in site$sali_asc_edition, without changing the codes. The report’s confidence phrases are 1 to 4; conversions from another classification and rapid checks of key attributes are “C”.
• An empty cell is not recorded; “No mottles”, “No segregations” and “No coarse fragments” are recorded absent. A colour without its moisture status is moist. Mottles of biological mixing, mechanical mixing and substrate influence are not mottles; jarosite mottles are.
• Textures: “Loam, fine sandy” is a loam, sandy and silty clays are clays of unspecified grade, and heavy or light before a grade lighter than a clay is the + or - qualifier. The first structure listed is read; “Blocky” alone names no type; “Not recorded (historical)” is NA. A strength without its moisture is not read.
• Field pH by depth: Raupach and Tucker first, then an electrode in situ, then a 1:5 suspension by probe; the pH after peroxide and the field EC are not used. The effervescence field test gives the horizon’s effervescence.
• Laboratory samples go to the horizon holding their middle, then NatSoil’s overlap rule applies; bulked samples count; results flagged invalid are dropped; “<x” is x/2 with NatSoil’s limit rule. A trailing letter of a method variant is dropped (6B2b is 6B2), and 2Z2_Clay is 2Z2_C.
• Tidal landform spellings are NatSoil’s; no tidal flooding is inferred, nor the soil water status. The depth to free water and the substrate are kept in the site but not used.

The run (6,911 sites, 5,600 pedons)

Of the layer’s sites with an ASC order, 18,557 are not in NatSoil already (same project and site, or a NatSoil site within 100 m). They were taken in a fixed random order, in stages of 2,000. The run stopped in the fourth stage, when the report server began refusing requests (after some 14,000, from 2 processes pausing 1 s): 6,911 sites were fetched. Reports over 150 KB (those with embedded site photos) were not downloaded: 1,286 sites (18.6%), unevenly by order (Organosols 82%, Calcarosols 41%, Dermosols 29%, Tenosols 27%; Vertosols 11%, Hydrosols 15%). 25 reports have no morphology table, which leaves 5,600 pedons. Against the surveyors’ labels:

The order agreement stayed within 34% to 35% from the first stage (1,588 pedons) to the last. The Hydrosols (1,377 pedons) agree in 4.9%, mostly keyed as Kandosols: the key confirms a Hydrosol by its drainage, which the reports seldom record (the depth to free water, observed once, is kept but not used). The Ferrosols (156) agree in 11.5%; most of the rest are keyed as Dermosols, as free iron was measured in only 30 of them. The laboratory data come from the API for 5,008 pedons and from the report’s table for 562; 30 have none. The MIR predictions fill 243 values in 30 pedons. A MIR water pH never stands beside a measured CaCl2 pH; two MIR calibrations behind one value occur in 4 pedons (16 values).

A pilot of 200 sites stratified by order (186 pedons) gave 37.6% at the order and 83.3% of 36 where the key decides. For comparison, the Queensland profiles of NatSoil (agencies 301, 302, 304 and 399; 4,412 profiles) give 54.3% at the order, 82.6% of 783 where the key decides. The 44 canonical fixtures are byte-identical under WRB, SiBCS and USDA.

Ferrosols: vertic properties that are not recorded

• The Ferrosol test keeps a soil out when at least 0.3 m of its B2 has vertic properties. A B2 horizon whose vertic properties are not recorded now counts as without them; only recorded slickensides or lenticular peds keep a soil out. Slickensides are seldom recorded (Queensland’s site reports have no column for them; NatSoil reads them as absent only when other cutans are recorded), so a measured free iron above 5% in the major part of the B2 had decided the order in 1 of 30 SALI Ferrosols and 2 of 35 NatSoil Queensland ones. The trace gives the thickness read this way (vertic_unrecorded_b2_cm), and the test names slickensides as missing only when recorded vertic properties leave the answer open.
• SALI: 18 pedons change to Ferrosols, 17 of them surveyed Ferrosols and 1 a Kandosol (order 34.5% to 34.8%). NatSoil: 19 change, 16 surveyed Ferrosols and 3 Kandosols (all 9,700 profiles 43.9% to 44.0%; Queensland 54.0% to 54.3%).
• Gley colours and mottles were looked at for the Hydrosols and left out of the key. The ASC says they may or may not be present and are not universally indicative of saturation. A reading by low chroma, gley colours or mottles in most of the upper metre would raise SALI (where a quarter of the pedons are Hydrosols) to 52.9% but lower NatSoil Queensland (where 2% are) from 54.0% to 52.1%.

soilKey 0.9.319 (2026-10-30)

New Zealand: the fluvial features read river deposits and the spelling aluvium

• NZSC fluvial features (Fluvial Recent and Fluvial Raw Soils): a recorded origin naming a river deposit (river, rivers, riverine, riverbed) is fluvial, and alluvium is also read in the spelling aluvium, both as NSD parent-rock notes write them (Hugo). A place name such as Riversdale is not read as a river.
• WRB Raptic reads riverine and riverbed like river.
• On the NSD (94 surveys) the NZSC group agreement goes from 26.7% to 27.0% (303 to 306 of 1,134). Of the 73 profiles the surveyors call Fluvial Recent Soils, 37 are keyed as such (34 in 0.9.318). Order (43.6%) and subgroup (14.7%) are unchanged, as are WRB and USDA on the NSD and the 44 canonical fixtures.

Australia: the agreement on NatSoil, measured again

The Australian key has been measured since 0.9.278 on CSIRO’s NatSoil (benchmark_natsoil(), profiles with the surveyor’s ASC label, CC BY 4.0, not shipped). On 9,700 profiles with the current code no prediction has changed since the last measurement (2026-10-27), at any level:

soilKey 0.9.318 (2026-10-30)

The New Zealand National Soils Database read by Hugo’s readings

NSD reader (read_nsd_pedons())

• The older ped term nut (and nutty) is granular or polyhedral, one of the two, not known which (NZ Soil Description Handbook 2024, Note 12.1; Milne et al. 1995 has no nut). It goes to a new horizon attribute, structure_type_one_of (“granular or polyhedral”), and structure_type stays empty.
  • classify_nzsc4() reads a criterion under each shape: it holds when it holds for both, fails when it fails for both, and is undecided otherwise. A criterion that needs polyhedral peds is undecided for a nut horizon.
  • The other keys read the shape as not recorded.
• The older strength words moderately weak, moderately firm and moderately strong belong to the Taylor and Pohlen (1962) scale, which has no class in Milne et al. (1995). They stay unread (undecided).
• The older notation, for designations the NSD has not converted itself:
  • A2 is E, with its subdivisions and suffixes (A21 E1, A2g Eg, A22x Ex2).
  • The old master G (a gley horizon) is Bg when a B horizon lies below it in the profile, otherwise Cg (GC: BCg or Cg).
  • The old master D (the substratum) is C, its prefixes and suffixes kept (BD BC, DG Cg, Dh Ch), except its old suffixes r and n. The NSD’s own conversions give Dr as Cu or C and Dn as Bt, 2Btb, Cm or Cu, so neither is the r (reduced) or n (sodium) of the current notations: Dr and Dn are C.
  • The provenance keeps the recorded designation and says what it was read as.
• The soil note PARENT ROCK goes down to the layers whose origin is not recorded (layer_origin, read by the NZSC fluvial features); a layer with its own origin keeps it.
  • A note of one material goes to every such layer.
  • A note naming a sequence (“loess over outwash gravels”; over, overlying or on, or under and underlain by read from the bottom) is split by the profile’s lithologic groups (2C, IIC) when its parts are as many: the first part to the unnumbered layers, the next to the next group. Otherwise it stays the site’s parent_material and goes to no layer. A slash is not read as a sequence: the NSD also writes it in mixtures and abbreviations.
• A survey whose soil table has no classifier_usda (or classifier_nzsc) column is read.

WRB 2022

• Raptic: the recorded origin of the layers on each side of a lithic discontinuity also reads loess (and wind-blown material) as aeolic, volcanic ash, pumice, lapilli and scoria as tephric, and river and estuarine deposits (and alluvium spelt aluvium) as fluvic (Hugo). Such a discontinuity is not Raptic.

soilKey Pro

• A loaded example without coordinates no longer keeps the previous profile’s. The coordinates, country and parent material are the loaded profile’s, and blank where it has none, as the moisture and temperature regimes already were. Coordinates feed the inferred temperature regime. The 44 WRB and SiBCS examples carry all four; the national examples carry no coordinates.

Agreement on the NSD (94 surveys)

Of the 73 profiles the surveyors call Fluvial Recent Soils, 34 are now keyed as such (9 in 0.9.317). The 44 canonical fixtures are byte-identical under WRB, SiBCS and USDA.

soilKey 0.9.317 (2026-10-30)

The national systems in soilKey Pro, and their agreement measured

soilKey Pro

• The Classify tab offers the four national systems: Canada (CSSC, 3rd ed.), Australia (ASC, 3rd ed.), New Zealand (NZSC, 4th ed.) and Hungary (HSCS 2024). They sit under WRB, SiBCS and USDA, each with its edition and an “experimental” label, and run only when ticked.
  • Each ticked system gets a card with the class at each level and its code (and the English gloss for Hungary).
  • A collapsed note lists the classes the key could not decide before the assigned one, with the attributes each needs.
  • For Hungary, a table lists the subtype and variety properties in the name and those undecided, with what would decide them.
  • The key trace and the Missing data panel include the national systems.
• The Pedon tab’s canonical profiles include one example per order (or type) of each national system: 10 Canadian, 15 Australian, 15 New Zealand and 15 Hungarian, each keying to the class it is labelled with. Loading one ticks its system and keeps the site details its key reads (the horizon notation, the drainage).
• The report and the session file:
  • report(), report_html() and report_pdf() take systems. The default runs WRB, SiBCS and USDA as before (byte-identical reports); a registry id or alias adds that system.
  • A saved session keeps the ticked systems, and reopening it ticks them again.
• The WoSIS data-source line is shown only for WoSIS data, not for the site details a session or an example carries.

Canada: designations in the FAO notation (CSSC)

• A profile that declares the FAO notation (site$designation_system “fao2006”, “fao”, “wrb”) is read by the Canadian key through a translation of its designations where the letters mean the same. The source is the book’s Table 6 (p. 154), checked against the definitions of Ch 2 and WRB 2022 Annex 3.
  • Masters: E = Ae, AE = Ahe, EB = AB.
  • B suffixes: Bw = Bm, Bs = Bf, Bhs = Bhf, Btn = Bnt.
  • Other suffixes: f (permafrost) = z, y and z (salts) = s, i = ss, m after a cementing agent = c, a 2 prefix = II.
  • The letters with no Canadian equivalent are not read, and what the FAO notation cannot write (the h of a plain A, the m of a plain B, the vertic v) stays undecided.
  • The designations are kept, and the evidence lists what each one was read as.
• A bare m (Bm, Cm) is not a cementation, as in WRB since 0.9.315.
• A fragipan (Bx) is no Bm: the m “lacks a brittle consistence when moist” (Ch 2, p. 14).
• isis_profile_to_pedon() declares the FAO notation, so the Canadian key no longer reads an FAO z (salts) as frozen.

Hungary (HSCS 2024)

• The clay ratio of the clay accumulation horizon (8.2) passes over a transitional AB, BA, EB or BE horizon with no clay recorded (Hugo), and reads the row against the horizon above it.

New Zealand: the National Soils Database

• read_nsd_pedons() reads the survey exports of Manaaki Whenua’s National Soils Database (NSDR; zips or folders of CSV tables) in memory into pedon records. It reads:
  • the field description, decoded through each survey’s code lists;
  • the laboratory samples, given to their horizons;
  • the provenance of every value;
  • the surveyor’s NZSC class, NZ Genetic class and Soil Taxonomy name. The 3rd-edition codes are recoded to the 4th: MIW becomes MIC, and BLAM (withdrawn) is read at no level.
• The older notation is translated: (B) = Bw, and fe, ca, cs = s, k, y.
• benchmark_nsd() compares classify_nzsc4() with the surveyor’s code at order, group and subgroup level.
• nsd_citation() gives the acknowledgement. The NSD is licensed CC BY-ND 4.0 and is not shipped.

WRB and USDA

• The frozen suffix follows the declared notation (cryic_conditions() and the mollic criterion 6a):
  • FAO and USDA write a frozen layer f.
  • The Canadian notation writes it z (CSSC Ch 2, p. 16); its f is the Fe and Al of a podzolic B.
  • The New Zealand and Australian notations have no frozen suffix (their f is fibric peat and faunal accumulation).
  On the NSD, 12 New Zealand profiles with fibric peat had keyed to the Gelisols; 7 are now Histosols, as the surveyors named them.

Agreement measured

• On the NSD, 77% of the NZSC results are provisional at order level. Where every earlier order was decided (265 profiles), the order agrees on 72.8%.
• Most disagreements come from data the NSD does not hold: glass in sand (Pumice Soils), carbonates (Semiarid), bulk density (Allophanic) and moist strength (Pallic). Others come from old descriptions (agreement 26% in the 1960s surveys, 61% in the 1980s) and from 4th-edition criteria that older classes do not meet.
• WRB, SiBCS and USDA are unchanged on every panel, and the 44 fixtures keep their names. The new readings concern declared national notations and the national keys.

soilKey 0.9.316 (2026-10-30)

The Hungarian system (HSCS 2024) names its subtypes and varieties

• classify_hscs2024() now names, besides the 15 types, the subtype properties (altípus tulajdonságok, 8.5, p. 29-33) and the variety properties (változati tulajdonságok, 8.6, p. 34-36) of each type’s table (section 7, p. 8-22), with the modifiers of 8.7 (p. 37). As the guide writes it (p. 7), the subtypes come before the type, the first with a capital letter, and the varieties after it, in parentheses, in the table’s order. The guide’s own example, “Savanyú, humuszszegény Agyagbemosódásos talaj (sekélyen kőzettörmelékes)”, is a test.
• The tables are in inst/rules/hscs2024/properties.yaml. Each of the 74 properties is a three-valued function, and the result carries every property with its verdict, depth and label ($qualifiers$status) and one levels row per property named.
• Readings decided by Hugo (2026-10-30):
  • Every listed property whose definition holds is named. A row of degrees of one property (carbonate degrees, humus classes, base status, peat decomposition, sekély/mély, művelt/rigolozott) names only the strongest, and none when a stronger one is undecided.
  • A property defined by a layer takes the depth modifier of 8.7 (felszíntől, sekélyen, középmélyen, mélyben) from where its layer starts. The intensity words are used only where the text defines them.
  • The humus classes are read layer by layer. The surface horizon of humuszszegény, lápföldes and nyers is the weighted A horizon.
  • Rozsdabarna needs hue 10YR or redder and chroma 5 or more. Fakó is read in an eluvial horizon only. A g suffix shows the reductive conditions of pangóvizes.
  • In a Láptalaj every organic horizon is peat.
  • The measured CaCO3 decides the carbonate degree, and 15 % or more without secondary carbonates is közepesen.
  • Karbonát-szulfátos and -kloridos need carbonate making 20 % of the salts.
• The other readings where the text is silent are listed in inst/rules/hscs2024/readings.yaml (five new entries).
• New attributes, undecided when not recorded:
  • horizon: soluble_salts_sulfate_pct, soluble_salts_chloride_pct, soluble_salts_carbonate_pct, p2o5_al_mg_kg, digo_pct, coarse_fragments_shape, secondary_carbonates_form, mottle_size_class;
  • site: contaminated, terraced, flood_irrigated, wind_deflation.
• The Antropogén key reads the hortic route of the anthropogenic horizon (8.1, criterion 1) from p2o5_al_mg_kg. The ISIS reader reads the mottle size (mottlesSizeclass).
• On ISRIC’s ISIS profiles from Hungary, Slovakia and Romania the names are what the data show. For example:
  • “Középmélyen erősen karbonátos, telített, sekélyen magnéziumos, kérges Szolonyec talaj (iszapos agyag)” for HU014, a Columnic Solonetz in WRB terms;
  • “Telítetlen, sekélyen podzolos, sekélyen fakó Agyagbemosódásos talaj (középmélyen duzzadó, sekélyen vörös, iszapos vályog)” for RO008.
  No property errs on the 974 ISIS profiles. The type of every profile is unchanged.

soilKey 0.9.315 (2026-10-30)

The last WRB 2022 and USDA readings of the ISIS triage

WRB 2022

• Gleysols, item 2 (Ch 4, p. 103): a mollic or umbric horizon more than 40 cm thick, with reducing conditions from 40 cm below the mineral soil surface, over a gleyic layer 10 cm or more thick whose lower limit is at 65 cm or deeper.
• Retisols (Ch 4, p. 118): the argic horizon starts within 100 cm of the mineral soil surface and has retic properties at its upper boundary. A natric horizon no longer counts, since the text names the argic one only.
• The limiting layer (Ch 2.1, rule 8, p. 23) includes the other cemented layers. A recorded cementation class of moderately cemented or stronger counts, or the suffix m after a cementing agent (Bsm, Bkm, Bqm). Continuity is read as met, as for the petric horizons. A limiting layer has no texture class, so a shallow soil over rock no longer leaves Arenic, Clayic and Siltic undecided.
• Mollic and umbric horizons: criterion 6a, 10 cm or more when directly over continuous rock, technic hard material or the horizons the text names. Rock, technic hard material and petric layers end the run of mollic layers.
• Qualifiers (Ch 5):
  • Rendzic (p. 145): a mollic horizon that contains or directly overlies material or rock with 40% CaCO3 equivalent or more. Any layer of the mollic horizon counts. Rock recorded as limestone, chalk, dolomite or marble counts without a measured CCE (Hugo).
  • Calcaric material and Endocalcaric read the HCl reaction where CaCO3 is not measured. Endocalcaric and Endodolomitic count from the mineral soil surface.
  • Arenic and Clayic are read as Loamic and Siltic are: from the mineral soil surface, with the limiting-layer alternative and the sand limit of > 45% of Table 8.39.
  • Hypercalcic: 50% CCE or more in every layer of the calcic horizon (Ch 2.1, p. 23).
  • The texture group without specifiers gives its first applicable member. When an earlier member is undecided, which one is first is not known, so the group gives none (Hugo).
  • With specifiers = TRUE, the texture qualifiers of one group that apply at different depths are all given, each with its specifier (Ch 2.1, p. 24-26). The depth specifiers follow Ch 2.3.1 rules 1 and 2 (p. 27).
• The Technosols lists of Ch 4 (p. 97) are read as printed, in two columns.
• ISIS reader, surface cracks:
  • Medium cracks are cracks of 1 cm.
  • “No cracks observed” means no cracks only in a profile described dry at the surface (cracks “may be evident only when the soil is dry”, 3.2.12, p. 80); described moist, they stay unknown (Hugo).

USDA Soil Taxonomy

• Aridisols (KST 13, item G, p. 69):
  • No aridic moisture regime is inferred when none is recorded. soilKey had read low surface carbon as aridic, which KST does not give. With no regime recorded, the order is undecided and the key goes on.
  • The order follows item G point by point: an ochric or anthropic epipedon, the diagnostic horizons KST lists within 100 cm, the cambic horizon’s 25 cm, and item G.2, the salic path.
  • The canonical Calcisol, Gypsisol, Solonchak and Durisol fixtures record an aridic moisture regime (Hugo).
• The kandic horizon: a layer with no recorded lower boundary is undecided, not an error (KSSL 2523).
• texture_class_from_pct() follows the texture triangle (WRB 2022 Annex 1, Table 8.39, after Soil Science Division Staff 2017) at four boundaries it had wrong:
  • sandy clay needs more than 45% sand;
  • clay 35 to < 40% with more than 45% sand is sandy clay;
  • silt 50 to < 80% with < 12% clay is silt loam;
  • clay < 7% with < 50% silt and more than 43% sand is sandy loam.
  It now matches aqp::ssc_to_texcl() on the whole grid. 707 horizons of the panels change class, and no name changes.

Results against 0.9.314

• In FEBR and KSSL no profile records a moisture regime, so no profile there is an Aridisol now. The 127 FEBR profiles move to the Ultisols, Alfisols and others. KSSL loses 34 reference Aridisols and gains 36 other profiles.
• ISIS KE069 (an indurated Ckm at 30 cm) is now a Phaeozem, as ISRIC names it.
• Fixtures: the WRB and SiBCS names of the 44 canonical fixtures do not change. In USDA, the Durisol is now a Typic Torriorthents (its duripan is not cemented) and the Luvissolo a Typic Hapludalfs (no moisture regime).

soilKey 0.9.314 (2026-10-29)

WRB 2022 mollic and umbric horizons: criteria 1-3 in every layer

• WRB 2022 Ch 2.1 (p. 23): when a diagnostic horizon consists of several subhorizons, every criterion except the thickness must be met in each subhorizon, unless the text says otherwise. For the mollic (3.1.20) and umbric (3.1.39) horizons, only the base saturation is “on a weighted average”. The horizon is now the run of layers from the mineral soil surface that each meet:
  • criterion 1, the structure (not recorded still does not block it);
  • criterion 2, >= 0.6% SOC;
  • criterion 3, the colour, items a-c. A plough layer takes the colour of the subhorizon below it.
  The thickness and the weighted base saturation are read on that run.
• Before, the carbon test passed when any one layer had 0.6%, and the structure was a share of the whole dark stack. An Ah of subangular blocky structure over thick massive dark layers therefore had no horizon. Bounding the stack by structure alone would have given ISIS CN012 a mollic horizon from its massive 6 cm Ah, since the colour and carbon tests let its C layers in; reading every criterion in every layer gives it none.
• Colour where it is not wholly recorded:
  • A moist value with no dry value still reads the dry value as the moist value + 1.
  • Of the older proxies, only one stays (Hugo, 2026-10-29): a layer with no colour recorded at all and >= 1.5% SOC is read as dark. The FEBR and WoSIS panels record no colour.
  • A dry colour alone now leaves criterion 3 undecided unless its value is above 5, and the dry chroma no longer stands in for the moist chroma.
  • The colour subtest records, for each layer, where its reading came from.
• A criterion that fails now decides the horizon even when another one is undecided. Until now, an undecided colour beside a massive surface layer left the horizon undecided.
• Results against 0.9.313:
  • FEBR WRB (22.0%) and WoSIS (16.2%): no name changes.
  • AfSP: 27.5 to 28.3%. BI wasp_2, an Ah of subangular blocky structure over massive dark layers, is an Umbrisol again.
  • ISIS: 61.5 to 61.1% (294 of 481), with 3 gained and 5 lost, each by the text:
    • gained: two profiles that record a dry colour only, which the dry-only proxy made Umbrisols, and an Arenosol;
    • lost: three that record a dry colour only or lose carbon below the first layer, a Kastanozem whose Ap is recorded as massive, and a Luvisol whose plough layer now takes the colour of the Ah below it (a Phaeozem).
  • The SiBCS and USDA panels and the 44 canonical fixtures are unchanged.

soilKey 0.9.313 (2026-10-29)

ISIS: slickensides and pressure faces are read as absent only where the cutans field is free

• ISIS has one cutans field per layer. With absent_unless_recorded = TRUE, slickensides and pressure faces that a described horizon does not mention were read as absent. Where that field records clay cutans, or cutans of no kind, they could not have been recorded there, so they now stay unknown (Hugo, 2026-10-29). Where the field is free or records no cutans, they are still read as absent.
• The seven ISIS Nitisols that record clay cutans only (KE015, KE016 and others) no longer read as having no pressure faces. KE016’s nitic horizon becomes undecided instead of absent.
• Results: the WRB and USDA names of the ISIS profiles do not change (481 and 748, rebuilt with this reader). The other panels do not read ISIS.

soilKey 0.9.312 (2026-10-29)

The AfSP reader reads its structure codes

• AfSP keeps the structure type, grade and size as class codes of the FAO-ISRIC (1990) and FAO (2006) guidelines. The reader passed them on unread, and the diagnostic tests look for words. A massive “M” or a single-grain “N” read as structure not recorded, so since 0.9.311 it did not block the mollic and umbric horizons. In the 120 profiles of the AfSP sample, 190 layers in 50 profiles record a structure type and 59 layers in 23 profiles a massive, single-grain or rock structure.
• The codes are now read by the AfSP dictionary (AfSP012Qry_DictioClassValues):
  • a range of grades by its lower end, as the ISIS reader does (“weak to moderate” is weak);
  • a range of sizes with both ends, since soilKey reads a size range by its upper end;
  • a code the dictionary does not define as not recorded (in AfSP 1.2: grade V, A and R, in 83 of 74,961 layers, and size S, in 5).
• Each code goes to the provenance. The bundled sample (load_afsp_sample(), built in 0.9.77) and profiles built before are read when they are loaded or benchmarked.
• AfSP WRB: 33 of 120 profiles agree with the reference, as before, with 12 RSGs changed: 2 gained and 2 lost.
  • Gained: a Solonetz whose Btn records columnar structure, and a Cambisol.
  • Lost: an Umbrisol whose Ah over 116 cm of massive dark layers falls short of the structure criterion; a Regosol whose B records subangular blocky structure, a Cambisol now.
  • The other panels do not read AfSP and are unchanged.

soilKey 0.9.311 (2026-10-29)

WRB 2022 qualifiers, the argic, nitic, mollic and irragric horizons, and two ISIS reader guards by the text

These are the remaining corrections from the triage of the ISIS profiles where soilKey and ISRIC disagree.

• Qualifiers (Ch 5):
  • Calcaric needs a layer of calcaric material 30 cm thick within 100 cm, and no calcic horizon. A moderate or stronger HCl reaction counts when CaCO3 is not measured.
  • Skeletic needs 40% coarse fragments averaged over 100 cm.
  • Geric no longer reads a missing Al as 0.
  • Aric needs a ploughed layer of 10 cm or more with an abrupt lower boundary.
  • Sodic needs a layer of 20 cm and no natric horizon.
  • Loamic and Siltic use the texture classes of the triangle.
  • Brunic needs a layer that fails cambic criterion 1 and meets criteria 3 and 4.
  • Pellic is tested in the upper 30 cm.
• Argic horizon (3.1.3):
  • Item 2.a.ii: when the coarser layer directly over the argic horizon is a plough layer, the clay increase does not count. The argic horizon is then shown by illuvial clay (2.b).
  • Item 2.a.i: a lithic discontinuity between the two layers also voids the clay increase. Readings decided by Hugo: the discontinuity counts when a material number records it or the coarse fragments show it (3.2.7, criteria 3-6). The particle-size ratios of criterion 2 are not read, since its item 2.b (not the original variation of the parent material) is not shown by the data.
• Nitic horizon (3.1.22): the shiny ped faces are pressure faces, not clay films. ISIS cutans of kind pressure are read into the new attribute pressure_faces, and the second-level structure into structure_type_secondary.
• Mollic and umbric horizons:
  • Criterion 1 needs aggregates of 10 cm or less, or cloddy structure, in half of the horizon. A recorded massive or single-grain structure fails it; structure or size not recorded does not block it (Hugo).
  • Criterion 5 is the weighted base saturation.
• Irragric horizon: follows its criteria (3.1.18). Since none of the data record a raised land surface, it is never shown, only ruled out or left open.
• ISIS reader:
  • An R row inside a described horizon is not read as continuous rock (IT017: an “R 0-5” row inside an Apkc 0-35).
  • A particle-size record of zeros only is missing.
• Results against 0.9.310:
  • FEBR WRB goes from 20.2 to 22.0%. AfSP goes from 28.3 to 27.5% (1 profile), and WoSIS is unchanged.
  • ISIS goes from 64.7 to 61.5%, with 4 profiles gained and 19 lost:
    • 7 Nitisols that record clay cutans only;
    • 4 Phaeozems whose Ah is recorded as massive;
    • 8 argic horizons under a plough layer with patchy clay films.
  • The SiBCS and USDA panels are unchanged.
• Fixtures: 7 of the 44 change qualifiers only: Skeletic, Calcaric and Irragric dropped where the text does not support them, Loamic added where it does, and Hypereutric now shown.

soilKey 0.9.310 (2026-10-29)

WRB 2022 diagnostics by the text: six groups

Found by running soilKey on ISRIC’s World Soil Reference Collection (ISIS). Six investigations sorted the profiles where soilKey and ISRIC disagree. Many came from soilKey readings that did not follow the 2022 text, and those are fixed here, group by group. Each group was measured on the BDsolos, FEBR, KSSL, Redape, AfSP, WoSIS and ISIS panels. The SiBCS and USDA keys keep their readings: where they shared a WRB diagnostic, it now has a separate reading for them.

• Mollic family:
  • Phaeozems need base saturation of 50% or more throughout to 100 cm or to a limiting layer, and carbonates are allowed (Ch 4, p. 113).
  • Chernozems and Kastanozems need a protocalcic layer or a calcic horizon at the depth the key gives, with base saturation of 50% or more above it.
  • Protocalcic properties are visible secondary carbonates (3.2.8), not laboratory CaCO3.
  • The chernic horizon follows its seven criteria and no longer needs worm holes.
  • Umbrisols take an umbric, mollic or hortic horizon, and the umbric horizon is the contiguous stack from the mineral surface.
  • Where base saturation is missing, the pH stands in, by Annex 2 Table 9.2.
• Argic family:
  • The argic horizon gains criterion 1 (8% clay or more), the transition of 15 cm or less, and criterion 2.b.ii (clay films common or more). It is a subsurface horizon.
  • Acrisols, Lixisols, Alisols and Luvisols use the 2022 tests: CEC below 24 per kg clay, and exchangeable Al above the bases in half of 50-100 cm. Where the cations are missing, the pH stands in, by Table 9.3.
  • The natric horizon gets its structure and ESP criteria, and Solonetz need a natric horizon within 100 cm.
  • The ferralic thickness counts adjoining sub-horizons. Ferralsols follow the text on the argic horizon above the ferralic.
• Vertic horizon:
  • Wedge-shaped aggregates count as well as slickensides.
  • The 25 cm counts adjoining layers, and the COLE path stays in the USDA reading only.
  • Vertisols need the vertic horizon within 100 cm, 30% clay above it, and cracks; missing crack data is undecided.
• Redox and plinthite:
  • Gleyic and stagnic properties are told apart by colour and by the site’s groundwater. This replaces a “mottles decreasing with depth” test that is not in the text. ISIS groundwater is now read into the new site attributes groundwater_kind and groundwater_depth_cm.
  • Stagnosols need stagnic properties on a third of 0-60 cm, and Planosols an abrupt textural difference within 75 cm with a transition of 2 cm or less.
  • Plinthosols take a plinthic, pisoplinthic or petroplinthic horizon. The pisoplinthic horizon reads nodules, and the petroplinthic horizon is at least strongly cemented.
• Organic material and Andosols:
  • Organic material is 20% organic carbon, not 12%. Histosols follow the key: 40 cm of organic material within 100 cm, or 10 cm over rock or ice.
  • Andosols sum the andic layers within 100 cm.
  • Where bulk density is missing, Alox + 1/2 Feox of 2% or more with a pH NaF of 9.5 or more counts as andic, as a field test. The new attribute ph_naf holds the pH NaF, and ISIS phnf is read into it.
  • Cryosols gain item 2: a cryic horizon within 200 cm with cryoturbation.
• Weakly developed and carbonate groups:
  • The cambic horizon excludes only the layers of another diagnostic horizon. Cambisols, Calcisols, Gypsisols and Fluvisols get their depth tests.
  • The calcic horizon follows criterion 2.
  • Arenosols use a weighted average of texture.
  • Fluvic material needs a water origin, and its strata are a texture reversal or irregular organic carbon. ISIS deposition origin is now read into rock_origin.
• Readings decided by Hugo after the measurement:
  • A profile described above 100 cm is decided on the part that is described (Phaeozems, Arenosols).
  • With no secondary carbonates recorded, a layer with CaCO3 >= 15% meets calcic criterion 2 by the laboratory.
  • Gleyic criterion 1 (>= 95% reductimorphic features) needs at most 5% oximorphic features, and criterion 3 needs a layer below that meets criterion 1.
• Results: on the 481 ISIS profiles with an ISRIC WRB 2022 name, the Reference Soil Group agrees for 310 (64.4%), up from 221 (45.9%) in 0.9.308. Other WRB panels: AfSP 25.0 -> 28.3%, FEBR 19.3 -> 20.2%, WoSIS 16.9 -> 16.2% (one profile, a Histosol whose H horizons have under 20% organic carbon). BDsolos SiBCS goes from 57.2 to 57.5%; Redape and the USDA panels are unchanged against 0.9.309.
• Fixtures: 10 of the 44 canonical fixtures change their WRB name, each by the text:
  • the Planossolo becomes a Planosol;
  • the Argissolo and the Nitossolo become Lixisols;
  • Cambic is dropped where the cambic layers belong to another horizon;
  • the Phaeozem fixture becomes Chernic.
  The Chernozem, Kastanozem, Acrisol, Fluvisol, Stagnosol, Planosol, Retisol and Gleysol fixtures gained or changed recorded properties so that they keep showing the soil they were written for (the Gleysol: the groundwater its drainage class names).

soilKey 0.9.309 (2026-10-29)

ISRIC’s KE009: four WRB qualifiers and the key to the Oxisols by the texts

Jelle Janssen’s profile KE009 (ISRIC, Kenya) is a Rhodic Ferralsol (Clayic, Epic, Eutric, Humic) and a Rhodic Eutrustox for ISRIC. soilKey gave Rhodic Ferralsol (Clayic, Epic, Ferric, Ochric) and Typic Paleustolls. Each difference was a soilKey reading that did not follow the text. KE009 now gets ISRIC’s names in both systems.

• Humic (WRB 2022 Ch 5, p. 136): the weighted average of soil organic carbon to 50 cm from the mineral soil surface, with the range below a limiting layer counting 0. soilKey counted every layer that starts above 50 cm whole, from 0 cm, so a deep layer with little carbon pulled the average down (KE009: 0.83% for 1.15%).
• Ochric (p. 141) also requires that the Humic criteria are not met.
• Eutric, Dystric and their subqualifiers use the pH when the exchangeable cations are not recorded. The text allows it (“pH values may be used according to Annex 2 (Chapter 9.13)”), by Table 9.3: exchangeable bases equal the Al at pH (water) 4.6, 4.9 or 5.4 for organic carbon below 2, 2 to 7.5 and 7.5 to 20 %. With the carbon unknown, the pH decides only where the three classes agree.
• The ferric horizon (Ch 3.1.11, p. 45) is read from its criteria: coarse red or black masses, or 5 % or more of nodules over 2 mm (ferric_nodules_pct), in 15 cm or more, outside a plinthic, pisoplinthic or petroplinthic horizon. soilKey had read it from Fe-dithionite of 5 % or more, which is not a criterion, so red Ferralsols with no nodules became Ferric. The argument min_fe_dith_pct of ferric() becomes min_nodules_pct.
• The kandic horizon follows Keys to Soil Taxonomy (13th ed., pp. 26-27):
  • the clay increase within 15 cm: 3 % absolute, 20 % relative or 8 % absolute, by the clay of the overlying horizon;
  • the depth of its upper boundary;
  • a thickness of 30 cm;
  • a texture of loamy very fine sand or finer;
  • an apparent CEC of 16 cmol(+) per kg clay or less in half of the 100 cm below the clay increase;
  • no fine stratification.
  soilKey had taken the WRB argic horizon with a low CEC.
• The key to the Oxisols (KST 13, Ch 8, item E, pp. 68-69) reads both of its items. One is an oxic horizon within 150 cm with no kandic horizon within that depth. The other is 40 % or more clay in the upper 18 cm with a kandic horizon within 100 cm. Since v0.9.17 soilKey had used “no argillic horizon above the oxic” instead, which made clayey Oxisols with a kandic horizon into Mollisols, Ultisols or Alfisols. soilKey records no weatherable minerals, and the kandic horizon of the second item is read as its oxic horizon is.
• Fixtures: 20 of the 44 canonical fixtures change qualifiers only.
  • Humic for Ochric in seven of them, where the 50 cm average is 1 % or more.
  • Eutric added in six of them, from the pH.
  • Ferric removed from four, which have no nodules.
  • The Nitossolo fixture becomes a Rhodic Kandiudox (USDA), since it has a kandic horizon.
• Against 0.9.308, no WRB Reference Soil Group changes on any panel (qualifiers only). The USDA order agrees with ISRIC for 47.5% of the ISIS profiles (from 47.3%); KSSL is unchanged; FEBR goes from 44.8 to 44.5%, as Latosols with a textural gradient now have a kandic horizon by KST 13 (their reference names predate the kandic horizon).

soilKey 0.9.308 (2026-10-29)

soilKey reads ISRIC’s World Soil Reference Collection (ISIS)

Asked for by Jelle Janssen (ISRIC), who had matched the ISIS properties to soilKey’s by hand.

• read_isis() reads profiles live from ISRIC’s ISIS GraphQL service, by profile code (read_isis(c("KE009", "ZW005"))) or by country (read_isis(country = "KE")). It returns soilKey pedons ready for classify_all(), and writes nothing to disk.
• isis_profile_to_pedon() does the translation:
  • Laboratory values go to soilKey units: organic carbon, nitrogen, CaCO3 and gypsum from g/kg; water at 1500 kPa from volume to mass; water-dispersible clay as a clay content.
  • FAO field codes go to soilKey’s words: structure, consistence, stickiness, plasticity, cutans, mottles, boundaries, effervescence, cementation and pans.
  • Base saturation, ECEC, aluminium saturation and silt (100 - sand - clay) are calculated from the parts.
  • Every value names its ISIS field in the provenance.
• The site carries the names ISRIC gives the profile: reference_wrb, the new reference_wrb_full and reference_wrb_edition, reference_usda and its subgroup, and the new reference_usda_edition.
• It also carries the soil moisture and temperature regimes when ISIS records them (KE009: ustic, isohyperthermic), gilgai, the licence and the citation (isis_citation()).
• Readings decided by Hugo:
  • ISIS keeps the field description and the laboratory samples in separate rows in more than half its profiles. Each sample goes to the described horizon that holds its mid-depth, as a thickness-weighted mean that fills only what the horizon lacks. A described horizon left with no laboratory value takes the samples that overlap it.
  • Clay films are the FAO (1977) cutans of kind clay: patchy, broken and continuous become few, common and many. Clay cutans with no abundance count as few, and so do cutans of no kind in a horizon whose designation has t.
  • Cutans of kind slickensides are the slickensides, counted as common when patchy, broken or of no recorded abundance.
  • The profile’s cracking (large or small) or, without it, gilgai gives cracks of 0.5 cm or more in the horizons starting above 100 cm.
  • Coarse fragments come from the middle of the FAO class when cfvo is not measured.
  • Calcareous inclusions are secondary carbonates. Hard Fe/Mn concretions over 2 mm are nodules. In a v horizon or an iron pan, mottles and soft Fe/Mn concretions are plinthite.
  • EC 1:2.5 is used only where it decides the salic horizon: 15 dS/m or more is a lower bound of the paste EC; below that, EC 1:2.5 x 12.5 is an upper bound. It goes into the new attribute ec_max_dS_m, which only the salic test reads, to rule a layer out.
  • With absent_unless_recorded = TRUE (the default), mottles, slickensides, plinthite, a duripan and artefacts that a horizon’s field description does not mention are absent in that horizon. Mottles stay unknown in a g, l or r horizon with no mottle field.
• benchmark_isis() sets soilKey’s WRB and USDA names beside ISRIC’s. On the 481 profiles with an ISRIC WRB 2022 name, soilKey now gives the same Reference Soil Group for 221 (45.9%); with the first draft of the translation it was 149 (31.0%). The USDA order agrees for 354 of 748 (47.3%; ISRIC’s USDA names are from the 1975 and 1999 editions). The median number of close calls per profile fell from 7 to 4.
• The investigation behind these numbers also found deviations of soilKey’s WRB 2022 diagnostics from the text, on the mollic, argic, redox, vertic, organic and weakly developed groups. They are fixed in the PRs that follow.

soilKey 0.9.307 (2026-10-29)

A soil temperature regime warmer than gelic rules out permafrost

Found on Jelle Janssen’s profile KE009 (ISRIC, Kenya), which kept the Cryosols open for want of a permafrost temperature.

• cryic_conditions() (WRB Cryosols, the cryic horizon and the Cryic qualifier) and the USDA permafrost test (Gelisols, the Histosols’ exclusion, the Gelods) now read site$soil_temperature_regime. A regime warmer than gelic (cryic, frigid, mesic, thermic, hyperthermic and their iso forms) means no permafrost, so the answer is no instead of undecided. KST 13 (Ch. 3, p. 50) gives the cryic regime a mean annual soil temperature between 0 and 8 C and no permafrost; the others are warmer.
• Gelic, the older pergelic, a missing regime or a word that is not a regime leave the question open. A measured permafrost_temp_C at or below 0 C, or a frozen designation, still wins.
• The Pro app has a field “Soil temperature regime (USDA)” beside the moisture regime. It is saved with the session and restored when the session is opened again.
• No name changes on the 44 canonical fixtures; profiles whose site states a warm regime lose the Cryosols (and Gelisols) from their close calls.

soilKey 0.9.306 (2026-10-29)

Pro app: the close calls name their classes, and a field for the soil moisture regime

Both reported by Jelle Janssen (ISRIC).

• The Ambiguities tab of the Classify page showed “?” in place of each reference soil group that could not be ruled out. The panel read the fields name and code, while the results carry rsg_name and rsg_code. It now shows the group and its code, for example “Cryosols (CR): missing permafrost_temp_C”.
• The Pedon page has a “Soil moisture regime (USDA)” field in the site section (unknown, aquic, aridic (torric), udic, perudic, ustic, xeric). The Soil Taxonomy key reads it: ustic leads to the Ustolls and Ustalfs, xeric to the Xerolls. It is saved with the session and restored when the session is reopened. A profile loaded from a fixture or from WoSIS sets it from its own site data, or back to unknown, so a regime is never carried over from the previous profile.

soilKey 0.9.305 (2026-10-29)

The Hungarian diagnostic soil classification: the 15 soil types

classify_hscs2024() keys a profile through the key to the soil types of the Hungarian diagnostic classification (Michéli et al. 2024, A diagnosztikus szemléletű hazai talajosztályozási rendszer, second approximation), from the Láptalaj (peat soil) to the Földeskopár (other soils). Experimental and opt-in, like the other national systems: classify_all(p, systems = "hscs").

• The key and its gates follow the text’s own order: the types after the first are “other soils that …”, so each gate tests only its own requirements (inst/rules/hscs2024/key.yaml, R/diagnostics-hscs-types.R).
• The diagnostic horizons, properties and materials of section 8 are in R/diagnostics-hscs.R: organic, humic, clay accumulation, swelling, cambic, solonetz and solonchak horizons; continuous hard rock, reductive conditions and the groundwater gley colour pattern; carbonate classes, artefacts and stratified material.
• The horizon notation is the FAO (2006) one the text adopts (R/designation-hscs.R): an l or r suffix shows reductive conditions, i slickensides, k carbonates, n sodium, p ploughing, t clay accumulation, u artefacts, w a cambic horizon.
• The texture triangle the text prints (p. 36) is the USDA triangle with Hungarian names, so Hungarian field textures (homok, vályogos homok, homokos vályog …) are read on it, as are English names and lab particle sizes.
• Names are the Hungarian singular, as the text’s naming example writes them; levels$name_en gives an English gloss. The codes (LAP … FOL) are soilKey’s. The subtype and variety properties are not keyed yet.
• New horizon attribute soluble_salts_pct: total water-soluble salts as Hungarian laboratories report them (the solonchak horizon). The EC is not converted, as the text advises.
• make_hscs2024_example() gives one example profile per type.
• classify_hierarchical() adds a name_en column to levels when the classes of a system carry an English gloss; the other systems keep their three columns.

Hugo decided seven readings (2026-10-29):

• reductive conditions (Réti talajok) are shown by a dipyridyl test, methane, iron sulfides, or an l or r suffix within 50 cm, and are undecided when none is recorded;
• the solonchak horizon reads the new soluble_salts_pct only;
• the sodium shares of the solonetz horizon are of the CEC;
• an organic horizon with no bulk density measured counts as 1 g/cm3 or less;
• slickensides common, many or continuous meet the 10 % of the swelling horizon, and they stand for the cracks when none are recorded;
• names in the Hungarian singular with an English gloss;
• stratified material reads 10 points of USDA sand (2-0.05 mm).

The other choices where the text is silent are in inst/rules/hscs2024/readings.yaml (17 topics).

soilKey 0.9.304 (2026-10-29)

New Zealand Soil Classification: rows of unknown role under the A horizon and in the B

Two places where classify_nzsc4() read a mineral row with no designation one way only now try every reading and keep a verdict only when all agree.

• The base of the A horizon. A row with no designation directly under the A may be A too, so every test measured from the base of the A is read at each base the A may have (its designated base, then the bottom of each such row in turn): the sandy groups (GS, RS, BS), part 1 of the Ultic Soils, part 2 of the Granular Soils, parts 1 and 2(a) of the Pallic Soils, the Rocky Recent Soils and the Perch-gley Typic Ultic Soils. Until now such a row was read as below the A.
• Part 2(b) of the Pallic Soils (also read by the Mottled-pallic Orthic Recent Soils). Rows with no designation below the topsoil may be part of the B or BC, so every choice of them is tried. Until now a B thinner than 10 cm over such rows was read as not meeting part 2(b).

On the 6,351 profiles of the NZSC review set, 6 change: one Argillic Perch-gley Pallic Soil becomes undecided at the Pallic order (its platy row under the A may be A, and then no fine texture lies between the A and 60 cm), and five Sandy Recent Soils become undecided at the sandy group, because a row with no designation runs below 60 cm and an A reaching 60 cm leaves the sandy window empty, which the sandy groups already read as undecided. Profiles with every row designated are unchanged. The readings file inst/rules/nzsc4/readings.yaml gains one topic (81 in all).

soilKey 0.9.303 (2026-10-29)

Pro app: uploads and downloads over the websocket, and a notice when the connection is lost

On soilkeypro.com some uploads and downloads failed with “Not Found”. Shiny moves files by plain HTTP requests to /session/<token>/upload/ and /session/<token>/download/, which only the R process holding the session can answer. Cloud Run keeps a visitor on one instance on a best-effort basis, so while a new instance was starting a request could reach another one. The websocket stays on the instance of the session, so the files now travel over it.

• sk_file_input() replaces shiny::fileInput() (7 controls). It draws the same box and button; www/soilkey-transfer.js sends the file in slices of 512 KB, each one acknowledged before the next, and the server rebuilds it. input$<id> keeps the shape fileInput() gave (name, size, type, datapath), so the tabs read it as before. The size limit is still shiny.maxRequestSize (5 MB by default); drag and drop still works.
• sk_download_button(), sk_download_link() and sk_download() replace downloadButton(), downloadLink() and downloadHandler() (13 downloads). A click runs the same file name and content functions; the file comes back in slices and the browser saves it under the same name. An error shows its message as a notification.
• When the connection to the server drops (the session ended, a phone put the page to sleep, or the network failed), a bar at the top of the page says so and offers a Reload button, in English or Portuguese, instead of a grey page that no longer responds. A profile saved with “Save session” can be reopened after the reload.

soilKey 0.9.302 (2026-10-29)

New Zealand Soil Classification: the subgroups of the Brown, Anthropic, Recent and Raw Soils

classify_nzsc4() now keys the 20 groups of the Brown, Anthropic, Recent and Raw Soils to their 109 subgroups, following the keys to subgroups of the New Zealand Soil Classification, 4th edition: from the Mottled Allophanic Brown Soils to the Typic Sandy Raw Soils. With this release every group of the 15 orders is keyed to its subgroups (336 subgroups of 70 groups); the Hydrothermal Recent Soils and six groups of Raw Soils have none and keep the group name.

• The keys live in inst/rules/nzsc4/subgroups/, one file per order, in the book’s order. The last subgroup of each group is the default (in the Allophanic Brown Soils the key gives the Typic subgroup criteria and makes the Pedal one the last).
• The gates are in R/diagnostics-nzsc-subgroups-barw.R: earthy or light B horizons, firm horizons beneath them, pallic colours, magnesic Brown criteria, impeded Acid Brown Soils, humose and immature Orthic Brown Soils, the Maori, refuse, mixing and fill subgroups of the Anthropic Soils, acidic windows, weathered-B horizons reaching 30 cm, sulfuric soil material, tephric material, buried soils, and the sandy Gley Raw Soils.
• Part 2(b) of the Pallic Soils is now one helper that the order key and the Mottled-pallic Orthic Recent Soils share.
• Shared gates gained arguments: fluid and saline horizons within 30 cm, scoria to 60 cm, contacts from the soil surface, and cemented horizons of a least thickness.
• New site fields: mechanical_mixing_purpose and acid_neutralising_amendment.

Hugo decided seven readings:

• the Maori Anthropic subgroups read the existing fields (artefacts and the layer origin);
• the purpose of mechanical mixing is a new site field, absent when not recorded;
• a coarse fill layer has 80 % or more coarse fragments and artefacts;
• acid-neutralising amendments are a new site field, absent when not recorded;
• the Humose Orthic Brown Soils have 10 % or less clay in every horizon to 90 cm;
• a compacted fill has one fill horizon of bulk density 1.5 or more;
• a placic horizon is left to the Placic Firm Brown Soils, not counted as the cemented horizon of the Cemented and Mottled-cemented Firm Brown Soils, as the Acid Brown key does.

The other readings are in inst/rules/nzsc4/readings.yaml (80 topics).

Two independent reviews were made, and their findings are fixed. The review against the book confirmed every code, position and default, and found the Maori names without their macron, scoria that need not reach 60 cm in the Scoriaceous Tephric Recent Soils, a coarse fill layer of natural gravel, and word lists that matched inside other words. The logic review ran 6,000 random profiles and refilled their missing values; it found no error and no change against 0.9.301, and verdicts decided where a horizon of unknown role leaves them open (the firm horizon and the B above it, the earthy B, the greater part of the B, the thin weathered-B, the subsurface horizons). The fill of the Compacted Fill Anthropic Soils is now the anthropic soil material the order key reads, and only the uppermost buried soil counts. Outside the four orders, rock (R, CR) with no pH is no longer read as possibly acid in the acidic subgroups of 0.9.299, which can only decide an open verdict.

soilKey 0.9.301 (2026-10-29)

New Zealand Soil Classification: the subgroups of the Semiarid, Oxidic, Granular and Pallic Soils

classify_nzsc4() now keys the 17 groups of the Semiarid, Oxidic, Granular and Pallic Soils to their 78 subgroups, following the keys to subgroups of the New Zealand Soil Classification, 4th edition: from the Mottled Aged-argillic Semiarid Soils to the Typic Immature Pallic Soils. Eleven of the 15 orders now reach subgroup level (227 subgroups of 50 groups); the Brown, Anthropic, Recent and Raw Soils follow.

• The keys live in inst/rules/nzsc4/subgroups/, one file per order, in the book’s order. The last subgroup of each group is the default.
• The gates are in R/diagnostics-nzsc-subgroups-sxnp.R: alkaline horizons, weathered coarse fragments, lithic and paralithic contacts, the clay decrease of the Brown Oxidic subgroups, cutanoxidic horizons below 25 cm, allophanic layers apart from the bulk density, sodic features or a calcareous horizon within or next to an argillic horizon or a fragipan, argillic horizons over the fragipan, acid or reddish parts of the argillic horizon, lamellae, cemented horizons and pedal B horizons.
• Shared gates gained arguments: the acidic B or BC subgroups read a pH limit and the major part (Granular Soils), the argillic subgroups a thickness, and the calcareous subgroups any depth.
• New horizon attribute: weathered_fragments_pct, the share of the coarse rock fragments weathered enough to break easily by hammer or spade.

Hugo decided two readings:

• the weathered coarse fragments are recorded in the new attribute, and not recorded reads as none;
• sodic features that are not measured are absent from a designated horizon without the n suffix, as the z suffix marks saline soil material (the group key of the Argillic Pallic Soils keeps its reading).

The other readings are in inst/rules/nzsc4/readings.yaml (69 topics).

Two independent reviews were made, and their findings are fixed. The review against the book confirmed every code, name and position. The logic review ran 6,000 random profiles and refilled their missing values; it found no error and no change against 0.9.300. The fixes:

• a clay decrease of the Brown Oxidic subgroups is decided when the missing clays cannot undo it;
• the pedal B of the Immature Pallic subgroups and the major part of the B or BC try each choice of the rows of unknown role (the topsoil aside), as now also the B or BC of the acidic, allophanic and magnesic subgroups of 0.9.300;
• lamellae with no bottom are weighed both ways (also in the Laminar Pallic group key);
• fragipans and densipans recorded as a pan type are not cemented;
• a fragipan or argillic horizon the description ends in leaves “immediately beneath” open;
• an undesignated row with no fine-earth record may be rock;
• exchangeable Na below 0.7 with no CEC is not a measure of the ESP;
• recorded coatings with no colour value may be dark, so the cutanic horizon they mark stays open.

soilKey 0.9.300 (2026-10-28)

New Zealand Soil Classification: the subgroups of the Podzol, Allophanic, Pumice and Melanic Soils

classify_nzsc4() now keys the 17 groups of the Podzol, Allophanic, Pumice and Melanic Soils to their 79 subgroups, following the keys to subgroups of the New Zealand Soil Classification, 4th edition: from the Humus-pan Densipan Podzol Soils to the Typic Orthic Melanic Soils. With the Organic, Gley and Ultic Soils of 0.9.299, the subgroups of seven of the 15 orders are keyed (149 subgroups of 33 groups); the other eight orders follow.

• The keys live in inst/rules/nzsc4/subgroups/, one file per order, in the book’s order. The last subgroup of each group is the default.
• The gates are in R/diagnostics-nzsc-subgroups-zlme.R: Bh horizons and their thickness, an argillic horizon beneath a Bh or a pan, fluid horizons above the podzolic-B, silt-mantled eluvial horizons, acidic and allophanic B or BC horizons, vitric allophanic material, buried granular B horizons, compacted ignimbrite, the Orthic Pumice subgroups (podzolic, allophanic, buried-allophanic, scoriaceous, immature), redox segregations within 60 cm, and pedal weathered-B horizons under the A.
• Shared gates gained arguments: pans at any depth (the Podzol subgroups name no depth) or with their top less than 90 cm down (the ironstone-pans and duripans “within 90 cm”), a calcareous horizon within or at 90 cm (Melanic Soils), a peaty topsoil at the surface only (where the text names no buried one), and the magnesic criteria in the B or BC horizon (Mafic Melanic Soils).
• New horizon attributes: pore_coatings_hue_moist, pore_coatings_value_moist and pore_coatings_chroma_moist, the colour of coatings on pores or gel-like masses (Acidic and Vitric-acidic Orthic Allophanic Soils).

Hugo decided seven readings:

• the colour of coatings on pores is recorded in the three new attributes, and not recorded reads as none, so the pH decides alone;
• “hue 7.5YR or more” (Podzolic Orthic Pumice Soils) is 7.5YR or redder;
• a silty layer (Peaty-silt-mantled and Silt-mantled Perch-gley Podzol Soils) is one of the silt, silt loam, silty clay loam and silty clay classes;
• any ignimbrite counts as the Taupo ignimbrite of the Mottled-compacted and Compacted Impeded Pumice Soils;
• the Bh of the Ultic-humose Densipan Podzol Soils tops a B horizon that is clayey and prismatic as a whole;
• the layer of the Allophanic Orthic Pumice Soils is itself vitric and allophanic;
• a scoria of no named composition is basaltic (Scoriaceous Orthic Pumice Soils), and “predominantly” is read by the thickness-weighted gravel from the mineral soil surface to 25 cm.

The other readings are in inst/rules/nzsc4/readings.yaml (61 topics). The key gives the last Orthic Pumice subgroup (MOT) no name; the chapter’s summary table names it Typic Orthic Pumice Soils.

Two independent reviews were made, and their findings are fixed. The review against the book confirmed every code, name and position, and found eight defects, among them a Bh read only under an eluvial horizon, “within 90 cm” read as “at 90 cm or less” for the ironstone-pans and duripans, and the buried B of the Buried-granular Orthic Allophanic Soils decided while its allophanic status was open. The logic review ran 6,000 random profiles and filled their missing values 185,000 times: it found two walks that never ended on a horizon of no thickness (in two new gates and in the acidic subgroups of 0.9.299), and eleven verdicts decided where the data leave them open, or open where they decide.

Outside the four orders, four readings change; none of the 6,000 random profiles changes order, group, or subgroup of the Organic, Gley and Ultic Soils against 0.9.299:

• the acidic subgroups of the Gley Soils no longer hang on a horizon of no thickness under the A;
• recorded coatings of moist value 5 may be cutanic (the Diagnostics admit value 5 with chroma 3 or less, and the coatings chroma is not recorded), so the Granular Acid Gley Soils leave such a B open;
• the Magnesic Yellow Ultic Soils read a mineral row of unknown role as a possible B;
• the vertic criteria of the Vertic Melanic Soils read a recorded grade below moderate, or a structure type other than blocky or prismatic, as ruling the pedality out on its own (it was undecided).

soilKey 0.9.299 (2026-10-28)

New Zealand Soil Classification: the subgroups of the Organic, Gley and Ultic Soils

classify_nzsc4() now keys the 16 groups of the Organic, Gley and Ultic Soils to their 70 subgroups, following the keys to subgroups of the New Zealand Soil Classification, 4th edition: from the Buried-podzol Litter Organic Soils to the Buried-granular and Typic Yellow Ultic Soils. The name of such a profile is now its subgroup (for example “Peaty Orthic Gley Soils”, “Mottled Yellow Ultic Soils”); the group and the order stay in levels. The subgroups of the other 12 orders follow.

• The keys live in inst/rules/nzsc4/subgroups/, one file per order, in the book’s order. The last subgroup of each group is the default, except under the Densipan and Perch-gley Ultic Soils, which the text gives none.
• The gates are in R/diagnostics-nzsc-subgroups.R. Criteria the groups share use one gate with arguments: sulfidic, saline, fluid, peaty, acidic, concretionary, calcareous, pan, mottled, nodular, argillic, and the horizons below a densipan or an eluvial horizon.
• New diagnostics: sulfidic and saline soil material, the mottled profile form, buried peaty topsoils, coatings on 10 % or more of the ped faces and dark coatings.
• New horizon attributes: sphagnum_fibres_pct (the Sphagnic Fibric Organic Soils) and shelly_layer (the Calcareous Recent Gley Soils).

Hugo decided four readings:

• sulfidic soil material that is not measured is absent when no horizon in the window can look sulfidic in the field (a reductimorphic horizon with a hue of 5Y or less red, or black), as the text describes it; otherwise it is undecided;
• saline soil material that is not measured is absent when the horizons are designated and none carries the z suffix; with no designations it is undecided;
• the Sphagnum share of the fibres and a shelly layer are recorded when met, so not recorded reads as none;
• a Densipan or Perch-gley Ultic Soil that passes no subgroup keeps the group name, with a warning.

The other readings are in inst/rules/nzsc4/readings.yaml. Two subgroup names follow their groups’ spelling: Typic Sulfuric Gley Soils (the text writes “Sulphuric”) and Typic Yellow Ultic Soils (the text writes “Soil”).

Outside the subgroups, two readings change:

• “in some part” now finds a run of 10 cm that passes when it lies directly below a horizon left undecided (it was read as undecided);
• the peaty topsoil reads a horizon with a recorded mineral field texture and no measured carbon as not peat (it was undecided), as the text defines it by peat or peaty textures.

Both can only turn an undecided order or group into a decided one.

An independent review against the text of the book found six defects, all fixed: (f) horizons counted in the mottled profile form, which the 4th edition excludes; the window of the organic material measured from its top rather than from the soil surface; a buried podzol written with the buried prefix missed under litter; a B horizon ending above 60 cm left undecided in the Granular Acid Gley Soils; the peat reading above; and coatings of value 5 left open in the Podzolic Yellow Ultic Soils. Recorded dark coatings now make a cutanic horizon without the (h) notation in the Granular Acid Gley Soils.

A second review checked the logic with 12,500 random profiles: no errors, no row-order effects, and every order or group that changes against 0.9.298 goes from undecided to decided through “in some part”. Its findings are fixed: a buried peat under a peaty horizon that is not a topsoil was missed; an undesignated row under the A, nothing described under litter, a window the description does not reach (for sulfidic and saline material), a gap above the clay of the Buried-granular Yellow Ultic Soils and a densipan with no depths were read as absent rather than undecided; one decisive lab value did not settle “less silt than clay”; and a pan could pass as the argillic horizon of the Argillic Orthic Gley Soils. The readings file now has 50 topics.

soilKey 0.9.298 (2026-10-28)

New Zealand Soil Classification: the 77 groups

classify_nzsc4() now keys each of the 15 orders to its groups, following the keys to groups of the New Zealand Soil Classification, 4th edition: 77 groups, from the Litter, Fibric, Mesic and Humic Organic Soils to the Hydric, Gley, Hydrothermal, Cryic, Rocky, Sandy, Fluvial, Tephric and Orthic Raw Soils. The name of a classified profile is now its group (for example “Orthic Brown Soils”, “Fragic Pallic Soils”); the order stays in rsg_or_order and in levels. Subgroups follow.

The groups read diagnostics the order key did not need: sulfuric and tephric soil material, densipans, perch-gley features, redox-mottled horizons, peaty topsoils, slowly permeable layers, nodular horizons and fluvial features. They also read new horizon attributes: packing_degree, ksat_mm_h, penetration_resistance_kpa, redox_segregations_location, sulfate_s_pct, roots_abundance, maori_cultural_layer and coatings_value_moist. On the site they read soil_temp_30cm_C, mean_annual_air_temp_C, surface_water, methane_odour, mechanical_mixing_depth_cm and artificially_drained.

Hugo decided four readings:

• the new attributes are created, as above;
• features that a describer records when met are absent when not recorded: stratification, nodules, cracks, refuse and Maori cultural layers, permafrost, surface water and mechanical mixing;
• the pans that the text names as often working as slowly permeable layers count as such: fragipans, argillic horizons, densipans, humus-pans, ortstein-pans, and lithic and paralithic contacts;
• the hydrothermal groups compare the soil temperature at 30 cm with the air temperature, in two new site fields.

The other readings are in inst/rules/nzsc4/readings.yaml, which now has 39 topics.

Two independent reviews checked the groups: one against the text of the book, one for the logic, with 3,600 random profiles. Their findings are fixed, and they changed the order key in three places:

• clay lamellae make an argillic horizon only when they add up to 15 cm within 90 cm;
• outside the New Zealand notation a Cr reads as a paralithic contact;
• site fields are read one value at a time.

Outside the NZSC, ensure_horizon_schema() now reads “yes” and “no” (and y, n, 1, 0) in logical columns as TRUE and FALSE; before, they became NA. The other systems do not change: the 44 canonical fixtures are identical.

soilKey 0.9.297 (2026-10-28)

The SiBCS family no longer repeats the class, and reads texture from mineral material

Two fixes to the family (5th level) of a SiBCS name, as Hugo decided:

• A class that already states the base saturation takes none in its family. The book uses the base saturation “except for the classes that already consider it at a higher level” (Cap 18, p 285), and the same rule holds for “álico” when the class is already Alumínica. The rule used to be set per order, so the Gleissolos Háplicos Ta Eutróficos repeated “eutrófico”. It is now read on the class name itself. classify_sibcs_familia() gains nome_superior (the name of the higher levels), which classify_sibcs() passes.
• The textural group, the gravel class and the skeletal constitution are averaged over the mineral horizons only, in every order: an H or O horizon no longer enters them. The Organossolos give their texture only through the underlying material (“Organossolos Háplicos, material subjacente médio”), no longer through a textural group of the whole profile (“textura média”).

Four family labels of the 44 canonical fixtures change (two Gleissolos, two Organossolos); no class changes, and the fixtures, named without the family, are identical.

soilKey 0.9.296 (2026-10-28)

The SiBCS family label in the words of the book

The family (5th categorical level) of a SiBCS name used to be written with soilKey’s internal codes, as in “Latossolos Vermelhos Eutróficos típicos, muito_argilosa, moderado”. It is now written as the SiBCS (2018, Cap 18) writes it: “…, textura muito argilosa, A moderado”. The textural group or subgroup follows “textura” (“textura média-arenosa”), with the gravel class and “esquelética” after it with no comma and the sand mineralogy in parentheses (“textura argilosa pouco cascalhenta (micácea)”). The surface horizon follows “A” (“A moderado”, “A húmico”), and the histic one reads “horizonte hístico”. In the Organossolos, the underlying material reads “material subjacente argiloso”, and the woodiness reads “muito lenhoso”. Hugo decided three of these readings: “horizonte hístico”, “material subjacente”, and writing the gravel class and “esquelética” together when both apply. The names keep the plural of the key’s classes. The codes in FamilyAttribute$value do not change, and neither does any class: the 44 canonical fixtures, named without the family, are identical. Seen in the name of an ISRIC profile sent by Jelle Janssen.

soilKey 0.9.295 (2026-10-28)

Many profiles from one horizon table

classify_profiles() classifies every profile of a table that has one row per horizon and a column saying which profile each horizon belongs to, as a survey or a database export usually comes. Site properties such as soil_moisture_regime come from a second table (one row per profile) or a list named by profile id. A map renames columns and converts their units on the way in: data.frame(from = "ORGC", to = "oc_pct", factor = 0.1) reads an organic carbon in g/kg as soilKey’s %. The names are checked once for the whole table, so a column that no key reads is named in one warning, not once per profile. The result has one row per profile, in the order of the table, with the class name in each system, the attributes the keys asked for and did not find, and the error of a profile that could not be classified (the others are classified as usual). The full classify_all() results and the pedons ride along as attributes. Asked for by Jelle Janssen (ISRIC), who classifies ISIS profiles this way. No classification changes: the 44 canonical fixtures are identical.

soilKey 0.9.294 (2026-10-28)

A warning for the attributes that no key reads

A horizon column that soilKey does not recognise, or a site property it does not know, used to be kept in the PedonRecord and read by no key without a word, so a misspelt column (organic_carbon_gkg) or a site property given as a horizon column (soil_moisture_regime) went unnoticed. PedonRecord$new() now warns about them when it is called from outside the package, naming each one with the closest recognised name: “organic_carbon_gkg (did you mean oc_pct?)”, “soil_moisture_regime (a site property: site$soil_moisture_regime)”. read_pedon_csv() warns for the file it reads, and now also accepts a spreadsheet whose columns are all aliases (Top, Bottom, Clay, SOC), which it used to refuse. The loaders (BDsolos, FEBR, WoSIS, NatSoil, NPDB, KSSL, LUCAS, AfSP, Redape) and the other constructions inside soilKey keep extra columns on purpose and stay quiet. The warning has the class soilKey_unrecognised_attributes; options(soilKey.warn_unrecognised = FALSE) turns it off. The new unrecognised_attributes() returns the same list as a table, for a pedon or for a horizon table and a site list, so a batch can be checked before it is built. Suggested by Jelle Janssen (ISRIC).

The site properties now have a reference of their own, as the horizon attributes have had since 0.9.266: inst/schemas/site-attributes.yaml, read by the new site_attribute_spec(), gives each recognised property its type, unit, description, the values the keys compare it with and the keys that read it, and inst/ATTRIBUTES.md lists them after the horizon attributes. A test fails when the code reads a site property that the file does not list.

In soilKey Pro, opening a session file keeps the site properties that soilKey recognises beyond the editor’s own fields (soil_moisture_regime, drainage_class, …): they reach the pedon and the classification and are saved again with the session. Until now they were dropped. A notice lists the horizon columns and site properties that no key reads, on opening a session and on uploading a CSV. No classification changes: the 44 canonical fixtures are identical.

soilKey 0.9.293 (2026-10-28)

New Zealand Soil Classification: the 15 orders

A new, experimental and opt-in system: the New Zealand Soil Classification, 4th edition (Manaaki Whenua - Landcare Research 2026), read from its Quarto source of 7 October 2026. classify_nzsc4() keys a pedon to the 15 orders of the Key to Soil Orders (Organic, Gley, Ultic, Podzol, Allophanic, Pumice, Melanic, Semiarid, Oxidic, Granular, Pallic, Brown, Anthropic, Recent and Raw Soils); make_nzsc4_example() gives one example profile per order. Groups and subgroups follow; the Cryic Soils of the appendix are not keyed. classify_all(systems = "nzsc") runs it.

The diagnostics read the New Zealand horizon notation (Bw, Bt, Bg, Bh, Bs, Bo, Bx, Bw(g), the pans Bhm, Bsm, Blm, Bfm, CR, an e prefix for anthropic soil material), moist colours, texture groups, pH, P retention, bulk density, volcanic glass, coarse fragments and their origin, structure and clay coatings, and the New Zealand field tests, as five new horizon attributes: naf_test (reactive aluminium), childs_test, sensitivity_class, fluidity_class and stickiness. From the site: drainage class, parent material (Melanic Soils), human truncation and an overthickened A horizon (the note to the key).

Three readings are Hugo’s decisions: a reductimorphic horizon in a designated profile is read from its notation (g, r, or peat), as pale B horizons of Pallic Soils have low chroma without being reduced; a measured P retention decides allophanic soil material, the field tests standing in only when it is not measured; and a reductimorphic horizon that reaches the base of the B horizon meets the depth condition of the Gley Soils. The other readings are in inst/rules/nzsc4/readings.yaml. WRB, SiBCS, USDA, Canadian and Australian results do not change.

soilKey 0.9.292 (2026-10-27)

Australian classification: the families

classify_asc3(include_family = TRUE) now places a soil in the family classes of its order and writes them after the name, as the book does: “Bleached, Eutrophic, Red Chromosol; thick, non-gravelly, loamy/clayey, deep”. The new classify_asc3_family() returns each criterion as a FamilyAttribute with its code (YY when the data cannot decide the class, ZZ when no class of the order fits); the result keeps them in trace$family, trace$family_label and trace$family_code. classify_all(include_family = TRUE) passes the option on when the Australian key is run. Without the option nothing changes.

The criteria are those of each order page: the thickness of the A1, or of the whole A in the Kurosols, Sodosols and Chromosols and in the Kurosolic, Sodosolic and Chromosolic Hydrosols (the book’s general rule, where the order pages disagree); gravel (2-60 mm) of the surface and A1, the larger of the two estimates; the field texture of the A1 and the most clayey one of the B; soil depth (to rock, a cemented pan or saprolite; otherwise to the C under the B, or the depth described in a soil without a B); and water repellence. The Vertosols use laboratory clay, the Calcarosols the depth of the Bk, the Arenosols and Rudosols the surface soil, the Organosols their organic materials. The Anthroposols and the tidal Hydrosols have none. The classes and the criteria of each order are in inst/rules/asc3/families.yaml, the readings in readings.yaml.

Two horizon attributes: gravel_pct (gravel-sized fragments) and water_repellence. The NatSoil reader fills them, with the coarse fragments of the ground surface and the surveyors’ family codes, and benchmark_natsoil(family = TRUE) compares each criterion. On the NatSoil profiles whose order agrees, the decided classes agree with the surveyors for 85 % of the thicknesses, 87 % of the A1 textures, 97 % of the B textures, 83 % of the depths and 75 % of the gravel classes. The Vertosol clay classes are mostly undecided: only 29 of 291 NatSoil Vertosols have laboratory clay.

No order, suborder, great group or subgroup changes on NatSoil. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

soilKey 0.9.291 (2026-10-27)

Australian classification: subgroups of the Rudosolic and Tenosolic Hydrosols

The Hydrosol page points the Rudosolic and Tenosolic great groups of the Redoxic and Oxyaquic Hydrosols to the subgroup lists of the Rudosols and Tenosols. classify_asc3() now keys such a soil, apart from wetness, through the Rudosol or Tenosol suborders, and takes the list of the suborder it keys to: “Basic, Rudosolic, Oxyaquic Hydrosol”. Those lists are the same for every great group of a suborder, so the soil is keyed to the suborder only. Apart from wetness, the Hypersalic Rudosol suborder is read by its salinity alone (its other conditions, no water table and no mottling, are wetness). A suborder with no list (Shelly, Carbic) gives no subgroup. A suborder left undecided before the one assigned makes the subgroup provisional only when it would lead to another list. The Salic Rudosolic and Tenosolic Hydrosols keep the Salic list.

The rules name these great groups under subgroups_from in the Hydrosol subgroup file, with site fields set for the walk only (.apart_from_wetness); load_rules() reads such blocks, the rule validator checks them, and the key walks the other order as the main key would, only as deep as the choice of list needs. The walk shows in the trace as a phase of its own (“suborders, as a Rudosol”).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles only the five that key to these great groups change: two get a subgroup, two stay undecided for lack of data, and one fits none of the three Rudosol subgroups (exactly half of its soil is strongly acid). Nothing else changes, at any level. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

soilKey 0.9.290 (2026-10-26)

Australian classification: carbonate segregations recorded as none

A horizon whose carbonate segregations are recorded as none (0 %), with no effervescence or CaCO3 recorded, was left undecided by the test of “calcareous”, although the same horizon with nothing recorded is read by its pH (a pHw below 7.0 is not calcareous, as free carbonate holds the pH higher). A recorded 0 % of segregations says nothing of the fine-earth carbonate, so the pH rule now applies to it too. Found in the review of 0.9.289.

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles no order or suborder changes, and 32 more orders are decided (1,305, at 74.5 %). 98 great groups change, nearly all to Eutrophic, which needs B and BC horizons that are not calcareous; the great groups that agree with the survey go from 1,076 to 1,140 and the subgroups from 499 to 555. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

soilKey 0.9.289 (2026-10-26)

Australian classification: subgroups of the Hydrosols, Arenosols, Rudosols and Tenosols (experimental)

classify_asc3() keys the subgroups of the last four orders, so every order that has great groups now keys its subgroups. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change, nor do the Australian orders, suborders and great groups, nor the subgroups of the ten orders keyed before.

• Hydrosols: Fibric, Hemic and Sapric for the Histic-Hypersulfidic and Histic-Hyposulfidic Intertidal Hydrosols; Episulfidic-Petrocalcic, Episulfidic and Petrocalcic for the Salic ones; 40 subgroups for the Redoxic and Oxyaquic ones, without the acidic subgroups for the Kurosolic great groups and without the sodic and natric ones for the Sodosolic, as the page says. The page sends the Rudosolic and Tenosolic great groups to the Rudosol and Tenosol lists; that is not keyed yet, and they keep the great group’s name.
• Arenosols: 13 subgroups for the Chernic, Bleached and coloured suborders, read over the upper 1.0 m of the profile; the carbonate great groups take the list without Humose-Calcareous, Melanic-Calcareous and Calcareous, as the page says.
• Rudosols: Acidic, Basic and Calcareous, read over the soil above any rock, pan or buried soil; for every suborder but the Shelly and Carbic. The Hypergypsic, Lutic and Stratic Rudosols have no great groups, and their subgroups follow the suborder (“Basic, Lutic Rudosol”): the hierarchical key skips a level only when the next one has a list named by the exact path.
• Tenosols: one list per suborder (4, 9, 6, 3, 12, 7 and 13 subgroups): chernic horizons with the acidity and carbonate of the B, the A2 or the solum; Subpeaty, Subhumose, Submelacic and Submelanic (every requirement but the thickness); Lithocalcic, Supracalcic and Hypercalcic for the Calcenic Tenosols, read on the Calcenic horizon.
• Readings decided with Hugo: the Salic Hydrosols take only the three subgroups listed; in the coloured Tenosols Basic is read as no part of the solum calcareous (the page’s “the A2 horizon” read as a misprint); in the Chernic Tenosols “the B horizon (if present)” with no B fails.
• benchmark_natsoil() reads the survey’s subgroup of a suborder with no great groups from its great-group column.
• The readings are in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (57).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles, 195 of the 414 profiles of these four orders that reach a subgroup list get a subgroup (75 decided). Only 20 can be compared with the survey (5 agree): most survey labels of these orders use older codes, and many profiles stop at a great group the survey does not give.

soilKey 0.9.288 (2026-10-26)

Australian classification: subgroups of the Vertosols, Calcarosols, Podosols and Organosols (experimental)

classify_asc3() keys the subgroups of the Vertosols, Calcarosols, Podosols and Organosols, one list per order as the order pages give them (43, 12, 15 and 8 subgroups). WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change, nor do the Australian orders, suborders and great groups, nor the subgroups of the six orders keyed before.

• Vertosols: the acid sulfate subgroups as for the acid sulfate great groups; Salic as for the Salic Hydrosols; Duric and Petrocalcic; the upper 0.1 m of the solum sodic (Episodic, by its weighted average ESP); the upper 0.5 m of the solum and the solum below it strongly acid, calcareous, mottled or with an ESP of 15 or more (Epiacidic, Endocalcareous, Epihypersodic and their combinations); Magnesic over the B. The solum is read as described, pans left out, rows of unknown role and horizons of unknown depth tried every way they may go.
• Calcarosols: Melanic, Vertic, Subplastic and Gypsic; Epibasic and Hypervescent as for the Calsilic Arenosols; Supravescent; Epihypersodic and Endohypersodic; Ceteric for the others. The Carbonatic Calcarosols take the list without Supravescent and Hypervescent, as the page says they are not required there.
• Podosols: a strongly or weakly coherent B (Parapanic, Fragic), a densipan in the A2 (Densic), a thin ironpan in or under the B (Placic), a siliceous pan under the B, a ferric horizon in the B, with the peaty, humose, melacic and melanic combinations.
• Organosols: what the organic materials directly overlie (Lithic, Paralithic, Marly, Rudaceous, Modic), a thin ironpan below them, and layers of unconsolidated mineral material within or below them (Terric within 0.8 m, Regolithic below).
• The examples of the four orders key to a subgroup (“Endocalcareous, Self-mulching, Black Vertosol”).
• The readings are in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (56).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles, 424 of the 533 profiles keyed to these four orders with a great group get a subgroup. Of the 347 whose order, suborder and great group agree with the survey and whose survey gives a subgroup of the key, 261 get one and 113 (43 %) the survey’s (Vertosols 100 of 239). Nearly every Vertosol subgroup stays provisional: the Sulfuric subgroup needs the pH of the upper 1.5 m, and the Sulfidic one a sulfide test, rarely recorded (read as absent, a test not done would decide 11 more Vertosols and leave the agreement unchanged).

soilKey 0.9.287 (2026-10-26)

Australian classification: subgroups of the Dermosols, Kandosols and Ferrosols (experimental)

classify_asc3() keys the subgroups of the Dermosols, Kandosols and Ferrosols, one list per order as the order pages give them (33, 29 and 14 subgroups). WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

• These pages read the B2 horizon where the Kurosols, Sodosols and Chromosols read the B2t: mottled, whole coloured, and strongly acid (Acidic, Humose-Acidic, Melanic-Acidic, Ferric-Acidic, Manganic-Acidic, Acidic-Sodic, Bleached-Acidic, Acidic-Mottled: the major part of the B2 with a pHw below 5.5, or a pHCa below 4.6 without pHw).
• New in the Kandosols: an argic or a bauxitic horizon within the B (Argic, Bauxitic). New in the Ferrosols: Snuffy (an A horizon with a very fine granular structure, peds under 2 mm, and a weak or very weak dry strength), and Sodic read on the lower part of the B2, as printed.
• The Kandosol page says the acidic subgroups are not required for the calcareous great groups: the Hypocalcic, Lithocalcic, Supracalcic, Hypercalcic and Calcic Kandosols take the list without them, as the Natric Kurosols take theirs without the Sodic ones.
• The examples of the three orders record organic C, mottles and the CEC, and key to a subgroup (“Haplic, Eutrophic, Brown Dermosol”).
• The dark horizon of the Chernic suborders (melacic or melanic) is now decided over every extent it may have, as the subgroups read it since 0.9.286. Before, a horizon 0.2 m thick in its surely black rows was read on those rows only, though rows that may be black below could change its major part, and a gap in the record directly above the first row that may not be black was not counted as possibly black. Such a gap may likewise be organic material (the peaty horizon, where the mineral surface lies) or fusic material (Fusic Anthroposols); where the mineral surface may lie at more than one depth, a verdict holds only when it holds at each. Over a clear or abrupt textural B, a row of unknown role between two A horizons is now read as an A horizon (before, as not black).
• The readings are in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (55).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles the orders and great groups do not change. The Chernic test becomes undecided on five profiles, where a suborder was already provisional, and decided on one: a Tenosol whose A1 (17.6 % organic C) may or may not be organic material gives a humose horizon either way, and is now Chernic. Of the 799 profiles keyed to these three orders with a great group, 549 get a subgroup. Of the 278 whose order, suborder and great group agree with the survey and whose survey gives a subgroup of the key, 213 get one and 113 (53 %) the survey’s (Dermosols 32 of 65, Kandosols 80 of 137, Ferrosols 1 of 11). Most of the others stop at Humose-Mottled, which needs organic C in the upper 0.2 m. The Ferrosol disagreements come from one survey whose profiles have 5 to 9 % organic C (combustion, a method the glossary names) at the surface, a humose horizon, but were surveyed Haplic or Acidic.

soilKey 0.9.286 (2026-10-26)

Australian classification: subgroups of the Kurosols, Sodosols and Chromosols (experimental)

classify_asc3() now keys a fourth level, the subgroups, for the Kurosols, Sodosols and Chromosols; the other orders follow. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change, nor do the Australian orders, suborders and great groups, but their names now take the book’s form.

• The names follow the general form the book gives, “Subgroup, Great Group, Suborder Order”: “Bleached, Eutrophic, Red Chromosol”. The great groups carry the same comma (“Eutrophic, Red Chromosol”; before, “Eutrophic Red Chromosol”).
• One list per order, as the order pages give it, applied under every great group of the order: chernic horizons (peaty, humose, melacic, melanic), a conspicuously bleached A2, a B with at least 0.3 m of vertic properties, ferric and manganic horizons within the solum, the lower part of the B sodic, the B2t mottled or whole coloured, a reticulate horizon below the B2t, a gypsic horizon in the B or BC, a siliceous pan in the lower A or upper B, Magnesic, base status, the carbonate classes and Effervescent, combined as the lists combine them (Bleached-Sodic, Mottled-Sodic, Ferric-Sodic and so on).
• The hierarchical key finds a list for every class under a part of the path (“CH-*“) and writes a name on the name of the class above (”Bleached, {parent}“); other systems do not change.
• benchmark_natsoil() reports the subgroups ($subgroups).
• The readings are in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (54).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles the orders, suborders and great groups do not change. Of the 560 profiles keyed to these three orders with a great group, 294 get a subgroup. Of the 173 whose order, suborder and great group agree with the survey and whose survey gives a subgroup of the key, 79 get one and 37 (47 %) the survey’s; most of the others stop at Humose, which needs organic C in the upper 0.2 m, rarely measured. The disagreements checked are survey practice: B horizons of heavy clay with many slickensides and lenticular peds surveyed Haplic rather than Vertic.

soilKey 0.9.285 (2026-10-24)

Australian classification: great groups of the Hydrosols, Arenosols, Rudosols and Tenosols (experimental)

classify_asc3() now keys the great groups of every order that has them (the Anthroposols have none in the text). WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change; three Australian orders change on NatSoil, because an AC horizon is now part of the solum (see below).

• Hydrosols: the acid sulfate groups as for the Organosols (with Histic-Hypersulfidic and Histic-Hyposulfidic), then by suborder: Histic, Faunic, Epicalcareous and the particle-size groups for the tidal and subaqueous soils; Gypsic, Halic, Epicalcareous, Mottled and Haplic for the Supratidal and Hypersalic; and for the Extratidal, Salic, Redoxic and Oxyaquic, Petroferric and the order the soil would key to apart from wetness (Calcarosolic to Rudosolic).
• Arenosols, Rudosols and Tenosols: what the soil directly overlies (hard rock, saprolite, marl, unconsolidated material, a red-brown hardpan, a calcrete pan, ferricrete, a siliceous pan, a reticulate horizon, coquina), “overlie” being read as “directly overlie”; ferric, bauxitic and manganic horizons; gypsic and argic horizons; Inceptic (a C/B), Tephric, Andic, Gritty, Gravic, Halic and Subhalic; the carbonate classes; Kandic, Tenic and Palic Arenosols; Epibasic and Hypervescent Calsilic Arenosols; Arenic Tenosols; Colluvic, Fluvic and Lithosolic Clastic Rudosols. In the Arenosols hard layers count only below 1.0 m.
• Nodules not recorded are read as absent (more than 20 % of nodules shows); this also applies to the Sesqui-Nodular Tenosols, which read them as unknown since 0.9.282. A gritty feel, heavy minerals, halite and gypsum not recorded are absent too.
• What the soil directly overlies, shared with the Calcarosols: a C or D horizon of unrecorded origin is no longer read as possibly hard rock, nor is sandy material read as possibly marl (Lithic and Marly Calcarosols included); a cemented layer that is no pan may still be rock, while one whose origin names saprolite is saprolite; a horizon recorded as a pan that makes up the layer (ferricrete, calcrete and the like) is a pan whatever its designation, and ferricrete or silcrete named by the layer or rock origin counts; an AC horizon is part of the solum, which moves three NatSoil profiles from Tenosols or Rudosols to Vertosols and Calcarosols, all three now as surveyed.
• New horizon attributes: manganiferous_nodules_pct, gypsum_visible_pct, halite_visible_pct, gritty, heavy_minerals_pct. The NatSoil reader fills the first three from the segregations, counting only those recorded as nodules or segregations of that kind (NaN where the recorded classes leave the amount on either side of the limit, which the key reads as undecided).
• The readings are in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (52).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles, three orders change, all three now as surveyed (1,273 decided, 74.8 % of them agreeing), and 51 fewer suborders are provisional, from the Sesqui-Nodular reading. Of the 3,536 profiles keyed to these four orders, 398 get a great group; most stop at the suborder, which is itself undecided for many Tenosols, and the Hydrosols wait on the sulfide test. Only 42 can be compared with the survey (order and suborder agreeing, a great group of the key): 21 get the survey’s great group. Most Tenosol labels use the suborder codes of the editions before 2021.

soilKey 0.9.284 (2026-10-24)

Australian classification: great groups of the Vertosols, Calcarosols, Podosols and Organosols (experimental)

classify_asc3() now keys the great groups of four more orders, ten in all. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change, nor do the Australian orders, suborders and the great groups of 0.9.283.

• Vertosols, by the surface: Self-mulching (a moderately or strongly self-mulching surface in the site record, as the text asks that the group be used only when the condition is not in doubt), Epipedal (a pedal A, blocky or polyhedral), Crusty (a surface crusty horizon over pedal clay: a surface crust in the site record, or a surface horizon 30 mm thick or less that is massive or weakly structured), Massive (massive or weak blocky), Peaty. The site record is read item by item, negations included; a thin organic layer at the top is passed over.
• Calcarosols: Duric and Petrocalcic (a pan directly under the soil), Rendic (the A directly over a Bk of more than 80 % soft carbonate, Hypercalcic only), Argic (clay lamellae in the B), Pedal, and what the soil directly overlies (Lithic, Paralithic, Marly, Regolithic), read from the designation, the layer or rock origin and any pan; a C of unrecorded origin, a description that stops at the base of the solum, or a row of unknown role that may be part of it, leaves them undecided.
• Podosols, by the kinds of Podosol B in the designations (Bs, Bhs, Bh, and a Basi under a Bh), with each suborder’s own list as printed, and Pipey where an A2 has a tongued boundary. The NatSoil reader now keeps the boundary shape (boundary_topography).
• Organosols: Folic (freely drained, organic materials as in Definition (ii)), Sulfuric, Sulfidic and the groups that replace them only with the evidence (Hypersulfidic, Hyposulfidic; no monosulfidic test is recorded), then Calcareous, Basic, Acidic. The upper 1.5 m includes buried horizons, and a part of it not described may hold acid sulfate material; sulfidic material not tested leaves the great group provisional.
• The readings are in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (48).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles, of the 465 of these orders whose order and suborder agree and whose survey gives a great group of the key, 75.5 % get the survey’s great group, and 76.4 % of the 301 decided (the Vertosols: 324 of 418, and 220 of the 281 decided). Several surveys record the crust of a Crusty Vertosol as a thin A11 over a pedal A12, which is read as the text describes it. The Calcarosols and Organosols stay provisional for want of data: the suborder or what lies under the solum for the first, the sulfide test for the second.

soilKey 0.9.283 (2026-10-23)

Australian classification: great groups of the Kurosols, Sodosols, Chromosols, Ferrosols, Dermosols and Kandosols (experimental)

classify_asc3() now keys a third level, the great groups, for the six orders with a B horizon of their own; the name is the great group’s (“Eutrophic Red Chromosol”). The other orders follow. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change, nor do the Australian orders and suborders.

• Pans in or under the B: Duric (red-brown hardpan), Petroferric (ferricrete), Petrocalcic (a calcrete pan under a B that is not calcareous), Placic (thin ironpan), from a new attribute pan_type (NatSoil records it, “none” included) or the designation (km, sm, qm, cm). A pan the record does not show is absent, as the order reads hard layers; a cemented layer of unknown kind leaves it undecided.
• The B2t or B2: Pedaric, Subplastic, Magnesic (exchangeable Ca/Mg below 0.1), Natric, base status (Dystrophic, Mesotrophic, Eutrophic, from the exchangeable bases and clay, the clay range of the field texture where no lab clay), the Sodosol ESP classes with their Mottled forms, and the carbonate classes as for the Calcarosols.
• Ferrosol Calcareous, Kandosol Leptic, Mellic and Andic.
• Hypocalcic now needs some carbonate in the solum (the class is of weakly calcareous soils); this does not change the Calcarosols.
• The hierarchical key finds the list under a class by the codes of the path to it (“CH-AA”), since the Australian suborder codes repeat from order to order; other systems do not change.
• benchmark_natsoil() reports the great groups ($great_groups).
• The readings are in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (44).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles, of the 2,160 of these orders whose order and suborder agree and whose survey gives a great group of the key, 21.6 % get the survey’s great group, and 80.6 % of the 98 decided. Most stay provisional for want of laboratory data: exchangeable Ca and Mg (Magnesic, before the base status classes), the bases and clay, mottles (the Mottled Sodosols) and, for the Kandosols, the porosity the Mellic great group asks.

soilKey 0.9.282 (2026-10-23)

Australian classification: the suborders of the Anthroposols, Arenosols, Rudosols and Tenosols (experimental)

classify_asc3() now keys the suborders of all fifteen orders. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change, nor do the Australian orders.

• Peaty, humose, melacic and melanic horizons (Chernic suborders), as the glossary defines them: organic C against clay for the humose horizon; black moist colour, a dry value of 5 or less, pH and structure for the melacic and melanic ones. Without organic C or a dry colour they are undecided.
• The conspicuously bleached A2: an e (not a j) in the Australian notation, or the dry colour of the glossary (80 % bleached: mottles not recorded leave it undecided).
• Leptic suborders: rock, a hard layer or a calcrete pan, or a C horizon of saprolite, with its top within 0.5 m; a C of unrecorded origin, or a description that stops at 0.5 m or above, is undecided.
• Arenosols: Hypergypsic, Hypersalic (EC of a 1:5 extract above 2 dS/m, no water table, no mottles), Chernic, Carbonatic, Calsilic, Stratic, Bleached, then the colour of the upper 1.0 m of the profile.
• Rudosols: Hypergypsic, Hypersalic, Shelly, Carbic, Leptic, Arenic (loose or weakly coherent sands), Lutic, Stratic, Clastic (gravelly).
• Tenosols: Chernic-Leptic, Chernic, Sesqui-Nodular (a ferric or bauxitic horizon over more than half of the solum), Calcenic, Bleached-Leptic, Leptic, Bleached, then the colour of the upper 0.5 m of the profile.
• Anthroposols: the kind of human-made material, from the layer origin.
• A soil with no salinity record (no EC, no saline surface) is read as not highly saline; shells, carbic materials and fusic material the record does not mention are read as absent, as for the Hydrosol settings.
• New horizon attributes ec_1to5_dS_m, strength_dry, strength_moist, ped_size_max_mm, ferric_nodules_pct, bauxitic_nodules_pct.
• load_natsoil_pedons() reads them (EC method 3A1, strength classes, ped size, nodules from the segregations). Abundance classes are now added as ranges, each class strictly between its limits, so two records of 2-10 % and 10-20 % make 12-30 % (undecided at 20 %); before, their middles were added. This also applies to the soft and hard carbonate of 0.9.281.
• The readings are in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (39).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles the orders are as before (43.9 %, 1,270 decided at 74.8 %). Of the 3,691 profiles of the fifteen orders whose order agrees and whose survey gives a 3rd-edition suborder, 75.9 % get the survey’s suborder, and 95.7 % of the 679 decided. Rudosols: 20 of 61, and the 10 decided agree; Arenosols 1 of 12 and Tenosols 15 of 222, none decided. Most Tenosols stay provisional because the organic C of the upper 0.2 m, the dry colours, the nodules or the origin of a shallow C horizon are not recorded; many surveyed Leptic Tenosols are described below 0.5 m with no rock, and the text does not make them leptic.

soilKey 0.9.281 (2026-10-22)

Australian classification: suborders of the Organosols, Podosols, Hydrosols and Calcarosols (experimental)

classify_asc3() now keys the suborders of eleven of the fifteen orders. The four added here are read from the order pages and the glossary; the suborders of the Anthroposols, Arenosols, Rudosols and Tenosols follow. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change, nor do the Australian orders.

• Organosols: the kind of peat (fibric, hemic, sapric) with the greatest thickness; when kinds tie, the most decomposed (the Comment). The kind comes from the squeeze test of the glossary, then the rubbed fibre content, a peat field texture or an Oi, Oe or Oa designation.
• Podosols: the saturation of the B horizon, from its days of saturation or from the drainage class. Rapidly drained is Aeric (the suborders define free drainage so); moderately well and imperfectly drained are Semiaquic; very poorly drained is Aquic; a well drained site stays undecided between Aeric and Semiaquic. Sulfuric material (at least 15 cm, pH below 4 with jarosite or hypersulfidic material below) and hypersulfidic material (incubation test) as the glossary defines them; without the test they are undecided.
• Hydrosols: the setting of the soil from the site record (tidal zone, inland water, landform, a saline surface). A setting the record does not mention is read as absent, as the order key already reads tidal flooding. Then Redoxic (more than half of the profile mottled: more than 10 % distinct or prominent mottles) or Oxyaquic (more than half whole coloured).
• Calcarosols: Hypergypsic (gypsum over 50 % in the solum; read as absent when no gypsum is recorded), Carbonatic (more than 40 % fine-earth carbonate in the upper 0.1 m), Hypocalcic, then the carbonate classes of a calcareous horizon (Bk, BCk or 10 % or more carbonate segregations): Lithocalcic, Supracalcic, Hypercalcic, Calcic.
• New horizon attributes carbonate_soft_pct and carbonate_hard_pct (visual soft and hard pedogenic carbonate); mottle_contrast is now read by the ASC too.
• load_natsoil_pedons() reads the landform pattern, mottles (abundance and contrast) and the soft and hard carbonate of the segregations and calcrete fragments. Where a segregation of unknown form or a fragment of unknown lithology leaves the amount spanning two carbonate classes, it is unknown.
• The readings are in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (30).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles the orders are as before (43.9 %, 1,270 decided at 74.8 %). Of the 3,396 profiles of the eleven orders whose order agrees and whose survey gives a 3rd-edition suborder, 81.4 % get the survey’s suborder, and 95.7 % of the 669 decided. For the four orders added here: Organosols 4 of 10 (the 4 decided agree), Podosols 27 of 48 (26 of the 33 decided), Hydrosols 14 of 49 (6 of the 7 decided), Calcarosols 33 of 175 (the 2 decided agree). Most of these stay provisional for want of data in NatSoil: the kind of peat, the contrast of the mottles, the form of the carbonate segregations and laboratory carbonate.

soilKey 0.9.280 (2026-10-22)

Australian classification: the colour suborders (experimental)

classify_asc3() now keys the suborders of seven orders: the Kurosols, Sodosols and Chromosols (the colour of the upper 0.2 m of the B2t), the Ferrosols, Dermosols and Kandosols (the upper 0.5 m of the B2) and the Vertosols (Aquic, then the colour of the upper 0.5 m of the solum). The name is the suborder’s (“Red Chromosol”); rsg_or_order keeps the order. The other suborders follow. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

• Colour classes as the ASC defines them (Red, Brown, Yellow, Grey, Black), from the moist matrix colour matched to the nearest chip; a colour half way between chips of different classes is of unknown class.
• The dominant class covers more than half of the window; when no class does, the one with the largest share, as the surveyors read it (a tie is undecided).
• Aquic Vertosols: saturation days of the upper 0.5 m, otherwise the drainage class as for the Hydrosols.
• An imperfectly drained site (some horizons wet for several weeks, in the Field Handbook) now counts as not saturated for 2-3 months, for the Hydrosols and the Aquic Vertosols; before, it was undecided. No order changes, but more are decided. Organic materials keep their own limit: “saturated for long periods” is 30 days, as in Soil Taxonomy, whose definition the glossary adopts, so poorly and imperfectly drained sites stay undecided there.
• benchmark_natsoil() also reports the suborders ($suborders).
• The readings are in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (24).

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles: the order agrees for 43.9 % as before, and 1,270 are now decided (was 1,052), 74.8 % in agreement. Of the 3,114 profiles of these seven orders whose order agrees and whose survey gives a suborder, 86.3 % get the survey’s suborder, and 96.6 % of the 623 decided.

soilKey 0.9.279 (2026-10-22)

Australian classification: the field texture first in the textural B (experimental)

The clear or abrupt textural B of classify_asc3() (Kurosols, Sodosols, Chromosols) now reads each horizon by its field texture grade, and by its lab clay only when it has none. The glossary gives the limits in clay “and/or” field texture and notes that where the two disagree the field texture may be the better guide to how the soil behaves; before, lab clay on both sides decided. The reading is in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml.

On the 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles with an ASC order, 255 change order: 104 of them now agree with the surveyors, 56 did before. Agreement goes from 43.4 % to 43.9 % (45.7 % counting the Arenosols as Tenosols or Rudosols), with 1,052 decided at 77.4 % (78.6 %). WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

soilKey 0.9.278 (2026-10-22)

NatSoil (CSIRO) as a benchmark for the Australian key (experimental)

NatSoil, the national soil site database of CSIRO, can now be read through its public API and used to check classify_asc3() against the orders the surveyors gave. The data are licensed per site, most under CC BY 4.0, and are not shipped: fetch_natsoil() saves them to a folder of your choice. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

• fetch_natsoil() downloads every public site (about 150 pages) and then the horizons, samples and laboratory results of each licensed site with an ASC order (one request per site, about 9,800), with a pause between requests. Files already on disk are kept, so a run can be resumed. Sites not licensed for external use are skipped.
• load_natsoil_pedons() turns the files into pedons: designations in the Australian notation, field texture grades, structure, moist and dry colours, slickensides, cracks, coarse fragments, calcareous segregations (records with only their nature are templates and are not read), pans, effervescence, plasticity type, the moisture when described, and laboratory pH, clay, exchangeable cations, CEC and effective CEC (whatever the extraction method, the “not recorded” methods included), ESP, organic C, free iron and carbonate. Samples count for the horizons they overlap, weighed by the overlap. A value below the detection limit (“<x”) is read as half the limit, unless the limit lies above one the keys read. The field pH stands in only where the laboratory has no pH, and the loss on ignition gives organic C only in peat. The site keeps the surveyors’ classification and confidence, the drainage class, the surface condition, coordinates, the licence and the citation.
• benchmark_natsoil() compares the orders: agreement for all pedons and for the decided ones, by the surveyors’ confidence, recall by order, the confusion table and the first order left undecided. The surveys predate the 2021 Arenosols, so an Arenosol given to a surveyed Tenosol or Rudosol is also counted as agreement in the edition figures.
• New horizon attribute esp_pct: the exchangeable sodium percentage as the laboratory reports it. classify_asc3() reads it for the sodic condition when exchangeable Na or the CEC is not given.

On 9,700 licensed NatSoil profiles with an ASC order, the order agrees for 43.4 % (45.3 % counting the Arenosols as Tenosols or Rudosols); 1,045 are decided, with 77.8 % agreement (79.1 %); of the 450 decided with the surveyors’ highest confidence, 80.2 % agree (81.8 %).

soilKey 0.9.277 (2026-10-22)

Australian Soil Classification: the 15 orders (experimental)

classify_asc3() keys a pedon to the orders of the Australian Soil Classification, 3rd edition (Isbell and the National Committee on Soil and Terrain 2021), following the online version with its errata. It is the second national system on the registry (soilkey_systems(), alias asc) and, like the Canadian one, runs in classify_all() only when asked. Suborders, great groups, subgroups and families follow in later releases. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

• The key reads the Australian horizon notation of the Field Handbook (A1, A2e, B21t, B3, Bhs, 2B2b …), and FAO or USDA designations by the role of each horizon (an E as an A2, a Bt as a B2t).
• New horizon attributes: field_texture (the Field Handbook’s texture grades, such as SL, SCL or LMC, with + or -), subplasticity, soil_water_status (the moisture of the horizon when described) and effervescence_class. Where a limit is a texture grade the field texture decides and lab clay stands in; where it is in % clay, lab clay decides and the field texture stands in as the clay range of its grade.
• The clear or abrupt textural B (Kurosols, Sodosols, Chromosols) reads the glossary’s clay figures, or its field-texture equivalents when lab clay is missing on either side of the boundary.
• From the site the key reads the drainage class and tidal flooding (Hydrosols), a cracking surface condition (Vertosols) and the notation of the designations.
• make_asc3_example() gives one small profile per order.
• The choices where the text is silent are listed in inst/rules/asc3/readings.yaml (21 readings). Two were settled on the survey data below: only a very poorly drained site counts as saturated for the Hydrosols (poorly drained is undecided), and the Vertosols’ cracks are not required in a solum described moist (the key’s “unless too moist”).

Checked against NatSoil (CSIRO, NatSoil v13, CC BY 4.0; the data are not shipped, and a reader will follow): of 9,698 profiles with an order from the surveys, 42.9 % get the same order (44.8 % counting the 2021 Arenosols against the Tenosols and Rudosols of earlier editions). 988 are decided, with no earlier order left open, and 78.6 % of them agree (80.1 %; 82.9 % of the 404 decided with the surveyors’ highest confidence). Most profiles stay provisional for missing data: the drainage class (Hydrosols), the designations (Podosols), the cracks (Vertosols), free iron (Ferrosols), carbonate records (Calcarosols) and exchangeable sodium (Sodosols).

soilKey 0.9.276 (2026-10-21)

Canadian classification: the colour of the Chernozemic great groups (experimental)

The key’s chroma limits for the Chernozemic great groups say “usually”. classify_cssc3() now reads them at two more places, each written down in inst/rules/cssc3/readings.yaml:

• a dry value of exactly 3.5, the limit of both the Black Chernozems (“darker than 3.5”, Ch 5, p. 68) and the Dark Brown (3.5 to 4.5), is Black when the dry chroma is 1.5 or less, the chroma of the Black, unless an Ahe, Aej or Ae marks the eluviation of the Dark Gray, whose range holds 3.5;
• in a cultivated soil, an Ap whose own dry chroma is 1.5 or less counts as the sign of eluviation of the Dark Gray Chernozems, whose Ahe the plough has mixed in (the key gives that Ap its own value limit, and Ch 5, p. 69, admits a mixed Ap); an Ahe, Aej or Ae in the profile still counts, and a buried one no longer does.

The colour means are rounded to the millionth before they meet a limit. On the NPDB scenario of 0.9.275, of the 348 Chernozems decided at the order level, 116 (was 92) get the survey’s great group, 84 of them (was 63) with the great group decided. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

soilKey 0.9.275 (2026-10-21)

An NPDB scenario with the dry colour and the soil climate estimated (experimental)

The National Pedon Database of Canada records neither the dry colour of most A horizons nor the soil climate, which the Canadian key reads for the Chernozems (and the Gray Brown Luvisols and some subgroups). An optional scenario now estimates them, each as a range, and benchmark_npdb() classifies a pedon at the ends of its ranges, counting a class as decided only where they all agree. classify_cssc3() itself does not change, and WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

• fetch_aafc_normals() reads the climate normals of Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada (Derived Normal Climate Data, 5 km grid, Open Government Licence - Canada) at given points from the AAFC map service, without downloading files.
• npdb_soil_climate() turns them into the soil climate of the book’s Tables 3 and 4: the mean annual soil temperature as the range from the air temperature to 4 degrees above it, and the climatic moisture index (growing-season precipitation over potential evapotranspiration, months of April to October above 5 degrees) with its moisture subclass. The potential evapotranspiration is computed by Thornthwaite, which matches the zones the book gives the Chernozem great groups on the NPDB, and by Hargreaves, the other end of the range.
• npdb_dry_colour_model() fits the dry value and chroma of A horizons on their moist colour where the NPDB records both (dry value = 1.70 + 0.92 x moist value; error about one value unit), and npdb_scenario() adds the estimates to the pedons, never replacing recorded values.

On the NPDB with the 1961-1990 normals, 295 of the 899 Chernozems that waited for the climate are decided, 292 of them in their own order: agreement on the Chernozems goes from 0 to 24.1 % at the order level. The error of the dry colour seldom decides the limits between the Black, Dark Brown and Brown Chernozems (7.4 % at the great group level). The Gray Brown Luvisols go from 0 to 228 of 265 in agreement (53 decided). On the other orders, agreement goes from 90.6 to 90.1 % at the order level (56 soils of other orders are now decided as Chernozems) and from 71.9 to 74.6 % at the great group level.

soilKey 0.9.274 (2026-10-21)

Canadian classification: three readings raised by the NPDB benchmark (experimental)

classify_cssc3() changes three readings, each written down in inst/rules/cssc3/readings.yaml (now 58 readings). WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

• Chroma 1 or less. Clause a of the gleying test (Ch 3 key E, p. 34) counts only in materials that develop higher chromas when oxidised, which a colour cannot show: a pale calcareous C or a grey parent material is grey of its own. A horizon gleyed by clause a alone is now read with its designation: gleyed with a strong g, not gleyed when designated without one (a weak gj included; with mottles unknown, which could pass another clause, the designation decides as for unknown colours), and, with no designation, gleyed unless it holds 2 % CaCO3 or more (then undecided). The other clauses still read the colours alone. The Btg of the Luvic Gleysols reads its colours the same way.
• Gleying and the Bt. In a soil with a Bt that begins within 50 cm, the gley colours must be in the Bt (Ch 7, p. 83: a Luvic Gleysol when they are in the Btg within 50 cm, a Gleyed Luvisol when they are only in the Aeg or below 50 cm). Soils with a solonetzic B are left out, since Ch 7 places them in the Gleysolic order by their gleying. The 10 cm minimum of Ch 7 (p. 81), which is not in the key, stays unapplied: on the NPDB it turned away 64 Gleysols the survey confirms, mostly because the depth recorded for the deepest horizon is the sampling depth.
• Base saturation (neutral salt). Criterion 6 of the chernozemic A is read as by an unbuffered salt, as the range each horizon’s data allow: the bases over the effective CEC are the value; the bases over the bases plus the exchangeable Al are an upper bound (the H is left out); a base saturation at pH 7 is a lower bound (the unbuffered value is higher); a pH in CaCl2 of 5.5 or more (without it, 6.0 in water) places it above 80 %. Only a value known to be 80 % or less fails; the rest is undecided. Negative amounts, pH values outside 0-14 and contradictory bounds count as no data, and the KCl Al stands in for the exchangeable Al.

On the NPDB (Chernozems apart), agreement with the survey goes from 89.8 % to 90.6 % at the order level (90.5 % to 91.5 % when decided), from 70.7 % to 71.8 % at the great group level (82.1 % to 83.9 %) and from 56.3 % to 56.6 % at the subgroup level (71.3 % to 72.3 %). Decided disagreements in which the key puts a surveyed soil in the Gleysolic order fall from 317 to 178 (Luvisols 141 to 72, Brunisols 51 to 29). In turn, 32 surveyed Gleysols are now decided in the Luvisolic order, 30 of them by the Bt rule, mostly Luvic Gleysols whose Btg or Btgj does not have gley colours. Base saturation no longer decides any Chernozem outside its order (11 still fail criterion 6 because Ca is not the dominant cation): 340 Chernozems (was 445) are decided outside the order on other criteria, and 899 (was 794) wait for the soil climate.

soilKey 0.9.273 (2026-10-21)

The National Pedon Database of Canada as a benchmark (experimental)

load_npdb_pedons() reads the pre-packaged CSV files of the National Pedon Database of Canada (NPDB, version 3, Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada, CanSIS; Open Government Licence - Canada; not shipped with soilKey) into pedon records, with the survey’s classification under the Canadian System of Soil Classification as the reference, and benchmark_npdb() compares classify_cssc3() with it at the order, great group and subgroup levels.

The reader cleans what the files hold:

• it rebuilds the designations in the Canadian notation;
• it turns organic horizons recorded upward into depths above the mineral surface and repairs mineral horizons with reversed depths;
• it reads the coded matrix colours, telling the dry colour from the moist one pedon by pedon;
• it drops the no-data code and the copied values of total N and tells its units apart;
• it computes base saturation from the bases and the CEC where the recorded column says something else, and swaps back a dataset’s pH columns;
• it turns the survey’s words into the 1998 names where they name a class of the key (the Solodic subgroups as the Solonetzic ones they became).

The NPDB records no soil climate, which the key reads for the Chernozemic order and the Gray Brown Luvisols: the 1,239 Chernozems are reported apart. 794 of them are provisional; the other 445 are decided outside the order, mostly because a measured property of the A fails the chernozemic A, the most frequent being base saturation (neutral salt) of 80 % or less. On the other pedons with a reference:

Most disagreements come with a provisional result, where the records lack what the key reads: the mean annual soil temperature of the Gray Brown Luvisols (all 265 are undecided), the pH in CaCl2 of the Brunisols’ B, the organic C of the Humic Gleysols. Among the decided ones, the largest group is the gleying of the Gleysolic order: Luvisols and Brunisols with a g horizon within 50 cm, which the key places in the Gleysolic order and the survey did not.

soilKey 0.9.272 (2026-10-21)

The Canadian orders and great groups: open bottoms, other notations, climate (experimental)

classify_cssc3() reads, at the order and great-group levels, what the subgroups already read since 0.9.271:

• the deepest horizon with no bottom depth may go on: the Bt, the podzolic B, the chernozemic A, the Brunisolic B and the Btg of the Luvic Gleysols are undecided when their thickness could change the answer, so a profile such as LFH, Ae, Bt (20 cm, no bottom) is no longer a decided Orthic Regosol;
• the Bt is decided horizon by horizon, by its properties when they decide and otherwise by its designation: the clay increase is measured against the eluvial horizon above (Ch 2, p. 15), not against any lower-clay horizon; a horizon fails when its clay films are recorded as absent or when every clay needed shows no increase, and is undecided when the clay it should be compared with is missing; the 5 cm are then reached by adjacent Bt horizons added up, a Bt “within 50 cm” is a run that begins there, and a thin Btg on top of a Bt makes a Luvic Gleysol;
• the podzolic B is likewise decided layer by layer, so a Bf ruled out by its chemistry no longer counts by its designation;
• in the FAO and USDA notations a B with a t is a Bt and a Bs or Bh is podzolic B material by designation, a B with neither is not; an A, E, C or O is never podzolic B material nor a Bt; designations written in capitals (“BHS”) are read; an EB or BE is the AB of a Solod; an E is the Ae of the Chernozemic and Solonetzic tests, so a Chernozem described as A, Bw, Bk, C reaches the Chernozemic order;
• the word “and” of a split horizon (“Ae and Bt”) no longer switches the Canadian notation off;
• the soil moisture subclass is read whatever its spelling (“Sub-humid”, “semi-arid”).

In about 3,000 test profiles, 88 change order or great group: 82 described in another notation with a Bt, now a provisional Luvisol or Luvic Gleysol instead of a Regosol or Gleysol, and 6 whose designated Bt shows no clay increase over the eluvial horizon above, now ruled out by that measured clay. In Canadian-notation profiles the subgroups and great groups can also change where clay films are recorded as absent, where clay was given on an organic layer, or where the eluvial horizon has no clay recorded (the designation then decides). WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

soilKey 0.9.271 (2026-10-21)

The Canadian subgroups: Solonetzic, Chernozemic and Luvisolic (experimental)

classify_cssc3() now keys the subgroups of the last three orders of the Canadian System of Soil Classification, 3rd edition (Key to Soil Subgroups, Ch 3, pp. 42-49), 101 more, so all 231 subgroups are keyed and the name goes down to the subgroup in every order (“Dark Gray Solod”, “Calcareous Black Chernozem”, “Gleyed Brunisolic Gray Luvisol”). The subgroups read, as before, measured properties first and the Canadian designations second:

• Solonetzic: the dry colour value of the A (Brown, Dark Brown, Black, and Gray and Dark Gray with a low chroma and a subhumid climate in the Solods and Solodized Solonetz), a strongly alkaline A (pH above 8.5), faint to distinct mottles within 50 cm;
• Chernozemic: a slickenside horizon, a weak solonetzic B (Bnj, Bnjtj, Btnj), eluvial horizons of 2 cm, a Bmk of 5 cm (0.5 % CaCO3 or more, or a k), no B of 5 cm, faint to distinct mottles within 50 cm;
• Luvisolic: a slickenside horizon, a fragipan, a podzolic B over a Bt within 50 cm, a Bm of chroma 3 or a thin Bf in the upper solum, an Ah of 5 cm, a Btnj, distinct mottles within 50 cm or prominent ones at 50-100 cm.

The Solonetzic great groups have no residual subgroup in the key, so a Solonetzic soil without an A stops at the great group; where an LFH lies directly over an Ae, the Gray subgroups read the Ae, as Ch 12 words them. The colour of the A is read over the whole A: a horizon with no value leaves the class undecided when it could change it. The readings where the book is silent are added to inst/rules/cssc3/readings.yaml (now 57). The Solonetzic example of make_cssc3_example() gains a dry colour and a pH, so it keys to a Dark Brown Solonetz.

Two changes reach the subgroups keyed since 0.9.269: a horizon with no bottom depth (the deepest one, which may go on) no longer counts as 0 cm when horizons are added up towards a thickness, so the Rego and Eluviated subgroups are undecided instead of decided on it; and a buried Aeb is no longer the Ae of the Eluviated Brunisols. Orders and great groups do not change, and WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

soilKey 0.9.270 (2026-10-21)

The Canadian subgroups: Podzolic, Gleysolic, Brunisolic and Regosolic (experimental)

classify_cssc3() now keys the subgroups of four more orders of the Canadian System of Soil Classification, 3rd edition (Key to Soil Subgroups, Ch 3, pp. 40-51), 67 more, 130 of the 231 in all, so the name goes down to the subgroup in seven orders (“Ortstein Humo-Ferric Podzol”, “Fera Humic Gleysol”, “Gleyed Eluviated Dystric Brunisol”, “Cumulic Regosol”); the Solonetzic, Chernozemic and Luvisolic orders still stop at the great group. The subgroups read, as before, measured properties first and the Canadian designations second:

• Podzolic: an ortstein (no depth limit), placic and duric horizons and a fragipan within the control section (cementation class, or a c in the designation), a deep Bt, an Ah of 10 cm, distinct to prominent mottles within 1 m;
• Gleysolic: a slickenside horizon, a solonetzic B, a fragipan below the Btg, the Humic Gleysol A, a Bgf horizon (dithionite Fe over the parent material, or gf), no B of 10 cm;
• Brunisolic: a duric horizon, an Ae or Aej of 2 cm, gleying mottles within 50 cm or at 50-100 cm;
• Regosolic: cumulic layering (colour value, organic C with depth, or a buried A) and faint to distinct mottles within 50 cm.

The readings where the book is silent are added to inst/rules/cssc3/readings.yaml (now 54). The Vertic Solonetz great group now reads its slickenside horizon horizon by horizon, as the Vertic Gleysol subgroups do: a horizon with no designation and no slickenside record is undecided instead of ‘none’, and a designation in the FAO or USDA notation is read (an ss counts, a designation without ss fails). The surface A of the great groups no longer takes in a buried A (b) under it, so an Ah over an Ahb is measured by the Ah alone. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

soilKey 0.9.269 (2026-10-21)

The Canadian subgroups: Cryosolic, Organic and Vertisolic (experimental)

classify_cssc3() now keys the subgroups of three orders of the Canadian System of Soil Classification, 3rd edition (Key to Soil Subgroups, Ch 3, pp. 37-40), 63 of the 231, so the name goes down to the subgroup there (“Terric Humic Mesisol”, “Brunisolic Dystric Turbic Cryosol”, “Gleyed Vertisol”); the other orders still stop at the great group. The subgroups read, as the orders and great groups do, measured properties first and the Canadian designations second:

• Cryosolic: ice layers, the mineral contact and the peat above it, the dominant peat below 40 cm, gleying, organic horizons over 15 cm, the pH of the B horizons, the thickness of the Bm, a Bt under an eluvial horizon;
• Organic: O horizons under folic ones, woody material, the dominant folic horizon, hydric, terric, limnic and cumulic layers, and the thickness of each kind of peat;
• Vertisolic: prominent, or faint to distinct, mottles within 50 cm.

The readings where the book is silent are added to inst/rules/cssc3/readings.yaml (now 46). The Cryosolic example pedon gains pH values. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

Fixes to the orders and great groups of 0.9.267 and 0.9.268:

• the Organic great groups leave limnic and folic layers out of the peat tally (they are neither fibric, mesic nor humic); a limnic layer is not a terric contact, and a middle tier of limnic material only is read with the surface tier;
• gleying (Gleysolic order) is decided horizon by horizon: a horizon’s measured colours outrank its own g, and a horizon with no colours and no designation is undecided instead of ‘not gleyed’;
• the rows are read in depth order whatever the order they are given in (on a copy; the layer numbers of the trace follow that order);
• the thick-A rule of the gleying test reads the whole surface A (adjacent Ah and Ap from the mineral surface; a buried A, b, never counts) and tests the mineral horizon right below it, whatever it is, a gap in the record allowed; in another notation the A masters are left out of the test and the E masters as the Ae are (a thick, deep E is tested);
• a horizon with no bottom depth ends where the next one down begins, and the deepest one may go on (both options of the Organic order, the organic column and the peat tally read it as possibly deep);
• limnic layers are read from whole words of their recorded origin, not on rock, and from the L master of the FAO and USDA notations;
• in designations of another notation, W and R are never mineral horizons, and an O or H without organic C is organic.

soilKey 0.9.268 (2026-10-21)

The Canadian great groups (experimental)

classify_cssc3() now keys the 31 great groups of the Canadian System of Soil Classification, 3rd edition (Key to Soil Great Groups, Ch 3, pp. 35-36), under the ten orders of 0.9.267, so the name is the great group (“Humo-Ferric Podzol”, “Dark Brown Chernozem”) and the order is in rsg_or_order. The great groups read, as the orders do, measured properties first and the Canadian designations second:

• Cryosolic: organic material over permafrost, cryoturbation (y);
• Organic: the folic thickness of Ch 9 (L, F, H), the dominant material of the middle tier (fibric, mesic or humic, by rubbed fibre, then designation), widened to the surface tier only by a terric, lithic or hydric layer;
• Vertisolic: surface dry value or Ah thickness, by drainage class, and the Ch 13 rule for the Ap of a poorly drained cultivated soil;
• Podzolic: at least 10 cm of Bh or Bhf chemistry;
• Gleysolic: a gleyed Bt (Btg), a humic Ah or Ap with at least 2 % organic C;
• Solonetzic: a slickenside horizon, an Ae of at least 2 cm, an AB or BA;
• Chernozemic: the dry value and chroma of the chernozemic A and signs of eluviation;
• Luvisolic: a forest mull Ah and a mean annual soil temperature of 8 C;
• Brunisolic: a thick dark Ah or Ap and the pH (CaCl2) of the upper B;
• Regosolic: an Ah or Ap of 10 cm.

The last great group of each order is the key’s “other soils”. The readings where the book is silent are added to inst/rules/cssc3/readings.yaml (now 33). The per-layer readings of podzolic B chemistry and of gley colours are factored out of the order diagnostics without changing them. The example pedons now reach a great group each. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change.

Fixes to the 0.9.267 order key, all in the Organic order:

• a folic layer (L, F, H) lying on peat is read as litter over peat, so F 0-5 cm over Om 5-160 cm is an Organic soil (it was keyed as Regosolic); the litter is not counted towards the peat limits;
• the kind of the surface organic layer is read from measured rubbed fibre before its designation (an Om with 60 % rubbed fibre is fibric);
• a layer of unknown organic status leaves the order undecided where it could change the answer, instead of failing it;
• in designations of another notation, the masters A, B, C and E are read as mineral, R as rock and W as water when organic C is missing.

soilKey 0.9.267 (2026-10-20)

The Canadian System of Soil Classification, to the order (experimental)

The first national system on the registry: classify_cssc3() keys a profile through the Key to Soil Orders of the Canadian System of Soil Classification, 3rd edition (Soil Classification Working Group 1998, Ch 3, pp. 33-34), from Cryosolic to Regosolic. Great groups and subgroups follow in later releases, so the name is the order. The system is experimental and opt-in: classify_all() and the Pro app keep running WRB, SiBCS and USDA by default; classify_all(systems = c("wrb2022", "sibcs5", "usda", "cssc3")) runs it beside them, and classify_cssc3() alone.

The Canadian keys are written largely in terms of horizon designations, which Chapter 2 defines partly by measurable properties. Each diagnostic reads the measured properties first (podzolic B chemistry, the Bt clay increase with clay films, the solonetzic B Ca/Na ratio, the chernozemic A, the gley colours) and the designations second, in the Canadian notation, where f is an illuvial Fe-Al-organic accumulation, m a slightly altered B, v a vertic horizon, ss slickensides, y cryoturbation, z permafrost and j a weak expression of the suffix before it. Measured properties decide whenever they can, pass or fail; designations decide only what they leave open, and only when the profile’s notation is Canadian (declared in site$designation_system, a Canadian site, or no sign of the FAO/USDA notation), because the same letters mean other things there. The trace records which route decided, and a warning says when the order rests on designations alone. The chernozemic A includes a soil-climate criterion (mean annual soil temperature at least 0 C, moisture subclass drier than humid), read from the new site fields mean_annual_soil_temp_C and soil_moisture_subclass or approximated from the USDA regimes; without it, the orders keyed after Chernozemic are reported as provisional. The choices where the book is silent are listed in inst/rules/cssc3/readings.yaml.

Three horizon attributes are added for the Canadian key and read by no other: fe_pyro_pct and al_pyro_pct (sodium-pyrophosphate-extractable Fe and Al) and mottle_contrast (faint, distinct, prominent). make_cssc3_example() builds one example profile per order. WRB, SiBCS and USDA results do not change: the 44 canonical fixtures are identical.

soilKey 0.9.266 (2026-10-20)

One file of metadata for the horizon attributes

The section, unit and description of each of the 112 canonical horizon columns now live in inst/schemas/horizon-attributes.yaml, and the new horizon_attribute_spec() returns them as a table with each column’s type and accepted aliases. The file also has room for what the national systems will need: the keys that read an attribute, the values of a categorical one and the range of a numeric one. The attribute reference inst/ATTRIBUTES.md is generated from it (before, the generator parsed the comments of R/utils.R and kept its own table of units), and a test fails when the file and the reference fall out of step. The reference’s tables are unchanged. No classification changes.

soilKey 0.9.265 (2026-10-20)

A generic classifier for ordered keys

Most of the national systems on the roadmap (Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Hungary, China) are ordered keys of the USDA kind: at each level the first class whose tests pass is assigned. Their classifiers will be thin wrappers around a new internal engine, classify_hierarchical(), that walks the levels named in the system’s registry entry. Two rules differ from the three older keys, on purpose: a class is assigned only when its tests pass (a default: true entry passes by definition), so a level where nothing passes stays unassigned instead of falling back to the last class of its list (with a warning saying where the name stopped); and a class that could not be decided for lack of data, tested before the one assigned, makes the assignment provisional. Run on the USDA rules, it gives the same name, order and evidence grade as classify_usda() for all 44 canonical fixtures.

ClassificationResult gains three fields: system_id (the registry id; WRB, SiBCS, USDA and SmartSolos results now carry it), levels (the class assigned at each level) and provisional_because. Its print() counts the classes actually tested (for SiBCS and USDA it counted the phases of the nested trace) and calls them RSGs only for WRB. No classification changes.

soilKey 0.9.264 (2026-10-20)

The rule engine reads nested blocks and none_of

National keys say things such as “other soils that have A, and B or C, and not D”. The rule engine now reads that in YAML: an entry of an all_of, any_of or none_of list may itself be one of these blocks, and none_of (no test may pass) joins all_of and any_of, with the same three-valued logic (an undecided test leaves the block undecided unless the outcome is already settled). A nested block appears in the key trace as a test of its own, with its sub-results as evidence.

The lower levels of a key are now read from the folders that the system’s registry entry names (great_groups from great-groups/), not from a fixed list of six folder names. The rule validator also reports blocks that name more than one combinator (the engine reads only one of them), combinators written as a mapping instead of a list, class codes and names that are not quoted strings (YAML reads an unquoted N as a logical and 11 as a number), codes listed twice in one list or one level, and, for systems added after the registry, predicates without the system’s suffix, so that a Canadian Chernozemic gate can never be WRB’s chernozem(). The helpers that every key shares (evidence grade, ambiguities, missing attributes) move from R/key-wrb2022.R to R/key-common.R, unchanged.

No result changes: the 44 canonical fixtures give identical names, key traces, evidence grades and warnings, and no rule of the three systems nests, mixes combinators or uses none_of.

soilKey 0.9.263 (2026-10-20)

A registry of classification systems

Each classification system is now a folder inst/rules/<id>/ holding its key and a system.yaml entry: id, aliases, classifier, levels, display names, edition, citation and status. load_rules(), classify_all() and the rule validator read that registry instead of repeating the three ids, and the new soilkey_systems() lists it. This is the first step towards the national systems (Canada, Australia, New Zealand and others): a new system will be added by adding its folder.

Nothing else changes. The 44 canonical fixtures give the same names, key traces, evidence grades and warnings as in 0.9.262, and every id or alias accepted so far still works, including the partial ones such as "wrb". classify_all(systems = "sibcs5") is now accepted as well as "sibcs". load_rules() now writes its default as "wrb2022"; it was the vector of the three ids, of which the first was used.

soilKey 0.9.262 (2026-10-15)

The WRB 2022 reference points to the 2022 edition

The README and the Portuguese getting-started vignette gave, for WRB 2022 (IUSS Working Group WRB, 4th edition), an FAO OpenKnowledge PDF that is the 2014 edition: its own title reads “World reference base for soil resources 2014”. Both now give the 2022 edition at ISRIC, https://files.isric.org/public/documents/WRB_fourth_edition_2022-12-18.pdf. The classification keys do not change.

soilKey 0.9.261 (2026-10-14)

Pro app: a visitor counter in the footer

The footer of the hosted app (soilkeypro.com) says, in one line, how many people are on the site now, how many have visited and from how many countries; a click on the countries opens a map of them above the footer. Asked for by the maintainer.

• A person is counted once. On the first visit the browser keeps a mark in its own storage (no identifier) and tells the server it is a new visitor; a later visit from the same browser counts as a session only. Nothing that identifies the visitor is sent or kept.

• The country comes from the address of the request, looked up in DB-IP’s IP to Country Lite table (CC BY 4.0), which the image downloads when it is built and the footer credits. The address is read for that and kept nowhere.

• Not counted: automated browsers (headless Chrome, crawlers, command-line clients, the capacity test, the Claude app’s browser), and pages that never open a Shiny session.

• The numbers are kept in Firestore, in the app’s own Google Cloud project: one document of totals (visitors, sessions, visitors by country, the day counting began) and one document per running instance with how many sessions it holds, written every 30 s. “Online now” adds up the instances that wrote in the last 90 s. Only soilkeypro.com writes to these; a tagged revision writes to separate test collections, and a local run to none.

• Before the counter, the request logs of Cloud Run (30 days) are read once by deploy/cloudrun/visitors-backfill.R: a session is a request to /websocket/ answered with 101, a visitor a distinct address. The logs begin on 2026-10-07, when the site came back online.

• The map waits for a click. The footer is on screen in every tab, and a map in it (190 px in all) took the height the tabs’ own tables need: with a 790 px window the key trace of Classify had none left, and DT does not draw a table of height 0. The map now opens in a panel above the line’s “from N countries” button (below it when there is no room above) and closes on a second click, a click elsewhere, Escape or, on a phone, a scroll of the page; the footer grows by one line only. On a phone the map keeps its 210 px (the app’s narrow-screen rule sets every map’s height to “auto”).

• Classify’s key trace is drawn at its own height, not the height left over in its card (DTOutput(fill = FALSE)). With a short window, or a footer one line taller, it was 36 px or less before.

New files: R/utils_visitors.R and R/mod_visitors.R in the app, its country table data/countries.csv (built by data-raw/visitor_countries.R; see inst/DATA-PROVENANCE.md), the image step in deploy/fly/Dockerfile, and eight strings in each language. The classification keys do not change.

soilKey 0.9.260 (2026-10-14)

Pro app: the light base map is Esri’s; CARTO’s asks for a key

CARTO’s base maps now answer a request without an API key with a tile that says “API KEY REQUIRED”. The app used CARTO’s light map, “Positron”, as the base of the Batch and Grid maps and as the “Light” choice of the Map tab, so those showed the notice in place of a map. The checks of each release counted the tiles that loaded, not what they showed, and did not see it.

The light map is now Esri’s light gray canvas (Esri.WorldGrayCanvas), with its attribution, in the three places and in the list the app registers its map scripts from. The Map tab’s choice reads “Light (Esri)”. Nothing else changes.

soilKey 0.9.259 (2026-10-14)

Tests: the slow ones run off CRAN

The CRAN pre-test of 0.9.258 (2026-10-14) did not pass automatically on r-devel-windows-x86_64: “Overall checktime 14 min > 10 min”, mainly from the tests, 461 s on Windows (158 s on Debian). The CRAN team asked to reduce the test timings, among other ways by running less important tests only off CRAN.

Every test that took more than 0.03 s on CRAN’s terms (NOT_CRAN unset, the installed package) on a fast machine now starts with skip_on_cran(): 457 tests in 137 files. They run as before with devtools::test() and wherever NOT_CRAN=true. The core of the three keys stays on CRAN, slow as it is: the tests that the canonical profiles classify to their WRB Reference Soil Group, to their SiBCS order, and to their USDA order.

Windows ran the tests of 0.9.258 about five times slower than this machine; by that ratio they take about 150 s there now.

The links to Embrapa’s AgroAPI are text

The check of this version found the three addresses of Embrapa’s AgroAPI (www.agroapi.cnptia.embrapa.br) out of reach: the server did not answer in 60 s, and the incoming check waited for it. The addresses stay, written as text and no longer as links: in the NEWS entry of 0.9.237, in the README, and in inst/CITATION, where the entry of the SmartSolos Expert article loses its url and keeps its DOI. As for the data servers in 0.9.155.

No code changes; the classification of every profile is the same.

These binaries (installable software) and packages are in development.
They may not be fully stable and should be used with caution. We make no claims about them.