Entering Gley Soil into a survey requires a different procedure than other soil types. Guidance for entering this into Ecobot is listed below, and can also be found on the Soils section of any sampling point in Ecobot Collector (see screenshot below).
How to record Gley soil in a soil layer
The Munsell Soil Color Book's Gley soil pages are formatted in a different way than other pages.
- On non-Gley pages, the tab is the Hue (i.e. a soil entered as 10YR 6/2 has a Hue of 10YR and the page's tab says 10YR).
- On Gley 1 and Gley 2 pages, the Hue is located on the X axis/bottom of the color chart, the Value is on the Y axis/left of the chart. The Chroma is located on the left-hand page of the chart (see example 2).
Gley Soil Example 1
Using the Munsell, the following soil has been identified:
- Soil observed is “GLEY 1 2.5/N”
- Hue is N
- Value is 2.5
- Chroma does not exist
- Record in Ecobot as N 2.5 / (blank)
Gley Soil Example 2
Using the Munsell, the following soil has been identified:
- Soil observed as Gley 2 10B 4/
- Hue is 10B
- Value is 4
- Chroma is 1 (refer to left page)
- Record in Ecobot as 10B 4/1
The app is designed to allow for the correct listing of the “hue” in the first select wheel, including: N, 10Y, 5GY, 10GY, 5G_/1, 5G_/2, 10G, 5BG, 10BG, 5B, 10B, and 5PB. Select the best hue that describes your soil horizon observation, and then select the “value” from the second select wheel. The third select wheel, or the “chroma” can have a value or be left blank.
The colors highlighted in the yellow box represent a “hue” (similar to 10YR, 5YR, etc). For the Neutral (N) hue if you were to write out a color for the bottom left corner block it should read N 2.5/.
Fun fact: The term gley (or glei) is derived from Ukranian, and was introduced into scientific terminology in 1905 by Ukrainian scientist Georgy Vysotsky.