This yellow Ultic soil is in the Marlborough Sounds. Ultic soils have yellow or yellow-brown subsoil. They are derived from quartz-rich sediments which have weathered to clay or sandy clays. They are of low fertility and their clayey subsoils have poor drainage. The Ultic soils in the Bay of Islands were probably the first in New Zealand to be cultivated by steel implements, undertaken in 1771 by staff of the French explorer Marion du Fresne.
Using this item
Reference: Les Molloy, Soils in the New Zealand landscape: the living mantle. Lincoln: New Zealand Society of Soil Science, 1988, plate 8.8
by Quentin Christie
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