Soils of Anglesey
Ever wondered what your soil looks like, where it came from, how it formed, why it is so different from place to place? More importantly – ever wondered what it does for us beside grow lawns, gardens and food? Did you know Anglesey was one of the first places to be mapped? Back in 1958 “The County of Anglesey – Soils and Agriculture” was published, written by Evan Roberts. It states in its first paragraph that the earliest description of the soills of Anglesey was in 1723 by Henri Rowlands,a vicar.
Since then our understanding of how soil forms, how we can best use it and its role in our enviroment have grown enormously. The system of classification used by Evan Roberts in the 1950s is still the fundamental basis but scientific methods of analysis and data collection – and especially of producing maps to show variation in soil properties have changed out of all recognition. Sadly also so has the principle of making this information freely available. However, whilst the extreme detail is expensive, a simplified version is freely available.
This page introduces you to the best way to examine the Soils of Anglesey. Our website has more details about soil formation and mapping, and why soils are so important to our environmental conditions and to climate changes. Sustainable soil management has never been so important.
The soil information mapping system LandIS is the product of decades of mapping by what was orginally called the Soil Survey of Engand and Wales, renamed as the National Soil Resources Institute and now a component in the Cranfield Envirnment Centre.
Comprising three main sections, the website offers detailed information by Soil Series (the early mapping of Wales shows through in the naming of many of the soil series), the basic unit of mapping used back in the 1950s, free of charge, and also a simplified map showing Soilscapes, a relatively new concept that links soil to landscape units, combining various soil series into groups occuring together in that landscape. There are more detailed maps and also interpretive maps of soil properties but these are expensive to access (but well worth it for serious usage).
From the screenshot above, anyone familiar with Anglesey will recognise two features – the geology map and the topography or landscape of the island. Not surprising since soil is formed by five classic factors, geology, landscape, climate, vegetation and time. Geology or as soil scientists call it, parent material, is the starting point. Position in the landscape or topography affects drainage and climate. Vegetation is an old fashioned term, these days we would probably say biodiversity as it is the interaction between the biology and the parent material and how the biology infuences changes. Climate of course relates to temperature and rainfall. Time is simply a measure of how long the other four factors have been interacting.
In an area as small as Anglesey there are no major changes in climate, nor any major topographic differences but geology does vary enormously, time is short – only 14,000 years since the ice cover melted; however the drainage element of topography plays an obvious role with low lying areas like the Cefni marshes and the few “mountains”.
For each of the identified soilscapes, LandIS provide a description of the typical soil features
