What is the difference between soils in Wisconsin and soils in Florida ?
Wisconsin and Florida lie in different climate zones, supporting very different vegetation communities and soil orders 4. Disregarding such things as parent material and topography, we can draw a few conclusions about the soils from these two locations. First, there is a difference in the duration of soil development. Wisconsin was covered by a glacier until about 10,000 years ago. The retreating glacier exposed unweathered parent material as soils in this pristine landscape began to develop. The landscapes of Florida have not been renewed by fresh deposits of unweathered minerals for hundreds of thousands or millions of years, exposing the soils there to a much longer duration of soil formation. The climate in Wisconsin is temperate subhumid supporting a mix of grassland and forest vegetation while Florida experiences a humid, subtropical climate. Thus, the intensity of mineral weathering and the overall level of biological activity are significantly greater in Florida soil ecosystems
