Across
- 5. The most fully decomposed organic matter in the lowest section of the O horizon
- 7. The loss of some/all of a soil's ability to support plant growth
- 8. The physical removal of rock fragments from a landscape
- 9. The breakdown of rocks and minerals by chemical reactions
- 12. A mining technique in which the entire top of a mountain is removed with explosives
- 13. A zone of leaching, or elevation, found in some acidic soils
- 14. Least weathered soil horizon, always occurs beneath the B Horizon
- 15. An element with properties that allow it to conduct electricity and heat energy
- 16. Precipitation high in sulfuric acid and nitric acid
- 19. The mechanical breakdown of rocks and minerals
- 20. A mining technique that creates a large visible pit or hole in the ground
- 21. The process of looking for minerals and metals in river sediments
- 22. The removal of strips of soil and rock to expose ore
- 23. The average concentration of an element in Earth's Crust
Down
- 1. The proportion of soil bases to soil acids, expressed as a percentage
- 2. Mining techniques used when the desired resource is more than 328 feet below the surface
- 3. The organic horizon located at the surface of many soils
- 4. A zone of organic material and minerals that have been mixed together
- 6. A soil horizon composed primarily of mineral material with minimal organic matter
- 10. A horizontal layer in a soil defined by features such as texture/color
- 11. The known quantity of a resource that can be economically recovered
- 15. Unwanted waste material creating during mining including mineral and other residues
- 17. The underlying of rock material from which the inorganic components of a soil are derived
- 18. A concentrated accumulation of minerals from which they can be extracted
- 24. The ability of a particular soil to adsorb and release cations