A Brief History of Modelling Soil Development

Historical pathways are described that led to today’s soil- and soilscape development models. Distinction is made between functional models and mechanistic models. Functional models describe the result of soil development using the factors of soil formation. These models are widely applied in soil mapping. Mechanistic models describe the processes behind the soil development; the current ones are quantitative and are mainly applied to describe the effects of global change on soils and the critical zone. The object that is modelled may be either the pedon or the soilscape, with at present still marked differences in process coverage and inclusion of transport processes.