Man dictates land use and therewith processes of soil formation.

Anthrosols are
characterised by features that result from human activities.
Ploughing mixed the topsoil of this (wet) meadow with material from deeper
horizons.
Deep ploughing is a common reclama-
tion measure in areas with shallow peat
on sand and improves both water holding
properties (peat) and drainage (sand).
Subsequent shallow ploughing formed
the homogeneous surface layer.
A common cultivation measure: man-made ridges for potato cultivation.
Tulip fields on 'geestgronden' (levelled, homogenized dune sands) in The Netherlands.
Intense cultivation and heavy manuring condition soils in areas with greenhouses.
The result is a deep dark hortic surface
horizon and strong biologic activity
(evidenced by worm and mole galleries)
in the subsoil.
Garden soils with a hortic surface horizon
are quite common in old habitation areas
in Europe.
Air photo of the village of Orvelte, The Netherlands, with Plaggic Anthrosols on
the slightly elevated 'Noord esch' in the background and modern parcelling of
deeply ploughed peat-on-sand in the foreground.
The thick humic surface horizon of this
Plaggic Anthrosol testifies of more than
500 years of soil cultivation.
In the eastern Netherlands, sheep and cattle were kept in stables with bedding
material of heath sods and/or forest litter. Plaggic Anthrosols feature a thick,
man-made, humus-rich surface layer produced by long-continued addition of
earthy manure from these stables.
Fresh bedding material was regularly provided until the bedding became too
thick and had to be removed. It was then spread out on the fields as an 'organic
earth manure'. In places, this system was in use for more than one thousand
years and produced plaggic horizons of more than one meter thick.
Depending on the composition of the bedding material, the plaggic horizon
is black (bedding material from heath lands with Podzols), as on this photo,
brown (bedding material from forest litter) or grey (bedding material from
sods with admixtures of bleached quartz from eluvial horizons of Podzols).
Many Plaggic Anthrosols contain remnants
of a buried spodic horizon, which was part
of the original soil profile.
Similar Anthrosols are also found in the
Amazon Basin in old agricultural land
from Indian communities.
Deep Hortic Anthrosols are created by 'winterbed' making in vegetable fields
in Western Europe. After harvest in autumn, manure was spread over the land
and beds were made by digging ditches, 2 spades deep, and throwing the spill
on the beds. After the winter, the beds were spread out over the whole field.
Stratified subsoil material is disturbed by repeated construction of ditches.
Soils of paddy fields contain a
sequence of anthrogenic horizons
with a puddled layer over a plough
pan (anthraquic horizon) on top of
a hydragric horizon (with iron/
manganese accumulation) in the
subsoil.
An irragric surface horizon forms where sediment-rich irrigation water is used
for a long time, as here in China.
The irragric horizon may become so thick that gravity irrigation becomes
difficult.