LOCATION CLIFTY KY+OHEstablished Series
TAXONOMIC CLASS: Fine-loamy, mixed, active, mesic Fluventic Dystrudepts
TYPICAL PEDON: Clifty gravelly silt loam--cultivated. (Colors are for moist soil unless otherwise stated.)
Ap--0 to 8 inches; brown (10YR 4/3) gravelly silt loam; weak fine granular structure; very friable; many fine roots throughout; 25 percent gravel; strongly acid; clear smooth boundary. (6 to 10 inches thick)
Bw--8 to 36 inches; brown (10YR 4/3) gravelly silt loam; weak fine granular structure; very friable; common fine roots; 30 percent gravel; few dark brown concretions; very strongly acid; gradual wavy boundary. (9 to 48 inches thick)
C--36 to 60 inches; brown (10YR 4/3) gravelly loam; massive, loose; 30 percent gravel in upper 1 foot increasing to 70 percent below 4 feet; strongly acid.
TYPE LOCATION: Grayson County, Kentucky; 1 1/2 miles southwest of Shrewsbury, 650 yards south of Kentucky Highway 411, 10 feet west of Sunfish Creek.
RANGE IN CHARACTERISTICS: Solum thickness ranges from 20 to 40 inches. Thickness of alluvial deposits ranges from 4 to about 20 feet. In the 10 to 40 inch control section gravel content ranges up to 50 percent in individual subhorizons but the weighted average is 15 to 35 percent. Gravel content at depths below 4 feet is 20 to 80 percent by volume. Soil reaction ranges from moderately acid to very strongly acid throughout.
The Ap horizons have hue of 10YR or 7.5YR, values of 4 or 5, and chromas of 2 through 4. Textures are silt loam or loam in the fine-earth fraction.
The Bw horizons have hue of 10YR or 7.5YR, values of 4 or 5, and chromas of 3 through 6; a few lithochromic mottles with 2 or lower chroma may occur at depths of more than 24 inches. Texture of the fine-earth fraction is silt loam or loam, and less commonly, sandy clay loam or fine sandy loam.
The C horizons have hue of 10YR, values of 4 to 7, and chromas of 1 to 6. Texture of the fine-earth fraction is silt loam, loam, clay loam, or sandy loam. These textures are stratified below depths of 4 feet in some pedons.
COMPETING SERIES: These include the Bermudian and Rowdy series. Bermudian soils have red colors inherited from parent materials. Rowdy soils have a solum depth of 40 to 60 inches.
GEOGRAPHIC SETTING: These soils are on level or nearly level flood plains. Slopes are 0 to 4 percent. Clifty soils formed in mixed alluvium derived from acid siltstones, sandstones, shales, and loess. The climate is temperate and humid. Average annual precipitation is about 42 to 50 inches, and the average annual temperature is about 50 degrees to 59 degrees F.
GEOGRAPHICALLY ASSOCIATED SOILS: These are the Philo and Pope series and the Cuba and Steff series on flood plains, Shelocta soils on footslopes, and Gilpin and Weikert soils on uplands. Cuba and Steff soils contain less than 15 percent sand coarser than very fine sand; in addition Steff soils have redoximorphic depletions within 24 inches of the surface. Gilpin and Shelocta soils have argillic horizons. Weikert soils have cambic horizons with more than 35 percent coarse fragments, and depths to bedrock of less than 20 inches.
DRAINAGE AND PERMEABILITY: Well drained. Runoff is negligible or low. Permeability is moderately rapid in the solum and moderately rapid or rapid in the substratum. Clifty soils are subject to occasional flooding of short duration in winter and spring months. Depth to a seasonal high water table is greater than 6 feet.
USE AND VEGETATION: Most areas are used for soybeans, corn, hay, and pasture. A small acreage is in forest. The native vegetation is mixed hardwoods, such as elm, river birch, poplar, willow, box elder, and red maple, oaks, shagbark hickory and sycamore; canebreaks in places.
DISTRIBUTION AND EXTENT: In areas of acid sandstones and shales in Kentucky, Maryland, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. The series is of moderate extent.
MLRA's 116A, 116B, 120, 124, and 126.
MLRA SOIL SURVEY REGIONAL OFFICE (MO) RESPONSIBLE: Morgantown, West Virginia
SERIES ESTABLISHED: Estill and Lee Counties, Kentucky, Soil Survey Area; 1969.
REMARKS: These soils were formerly included with the Pope series, and some may have been included in the Tioga series.
The activity class was determined by using soils in a similar location.
Soil Interpretations Record KY0062
Diagnostic horizons in the pedon are:
Ochric epipedon, 0 to 8 inches (Ap horizon)
Cambic horizon, 8 to 36 inches (Bw horizon)