TerrHum (iOS app) in the field during the Symposium "Adapting forest to climate change: methods, tools and projects", held by the LIFE FORECCAsT project in Toulouse, France on November 19 and 20

Abstract

The name TerrHum comes from the abbreviation of the words Terrestrial (not hydromorphic, not submerged soils) and Humipedon (superficial part of a soil, richer in organic matter and composed of organic and organo-mineral soil horizons). This application allows classifying all forest topsoils except submerged ones. The app is built on the indications about humus diagnostic horizons, humus Forms and humus Systems reported and illustrated in 8 articles published in an Applied Soil Ecology Special Issue entitled Humusica (Zanella et al., 2018d, 2018a, 2018c, 2018e, 2018f, 2018g, 2018h, 2018b; Zanella and Ascher-Jenull, 2018a). All Humusica articles are downloadable here: http://intra.tesaf.unipd.it/people/zanella/publications.html In Humusica, the forest Humipedons are classified in five humus Systems (Mull, Moder, Mor, Amphi and Tangel) and 17 humus Forms. A humus System reflects how fast organic matter is degraded and incorporated relative to specific pedofauna and microbial communities generating an organisation in peculiar soil horizons. In the field, the operator is facing a soil profile to be classified. A cubic volume of 50 x 50 x 50 cm is generally sufficient for studying Humus systems and forms. The profile looks like a sandwich composed of overlapping horizons. TerrHum is an app that recalls images on the screen of iOS devices (iPhone, iPad and even on Mac computers since 17 October 2017 after Catalina update). These images are slides prepared on purpose to classify the humipedons. They are multiple answers/questions or photographs. Just touch the screen at the level of words or images to classify forest soil humipedons. TerrHum shows a series of YES/NO questions allowing to determine the soil horizons of a forest humipedon. A given series of horizons is then automatically classified in a humus Form. Similar humus Forms are collected in a larger unit called humus Systems

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