Question

Explain whether or not you would expect the soil of flood plains (inceptisols and entisols) to be fertile.

Answer 1

Answer:

Flood Plains are expected to be fertile all things being equal.

Explanation:

Flooding is a natural occurrence which fills the floodplains with soil and nutrients. Of course, floodplains are excellent sites for agriculture – they are flat, water is available, and the soils are among the most productive on Earth due to frequent floods that deposit nutrient-rich fine-grained sediments, at least prior to alteration of the environment by levees or dams.

The bulk of modern agricultural activity today is concentrated on the floodplains, which include the Susquehanna River Delta, the upper Tigris-Euphrates basin, the Nile Delta, Central Valley of California, and the Mississippi and Missouri Rivers floodplains to mention a few.

Cheers!

Answer 2

Fertile soils are generally those with well-developed horizons of both mineral and organic matter. In the case of the soils of flood plains, the soils lack such clearly defined, well-developed horizons and so they would not be expected to be fertile.