--- title: Soil — a lesson of Mova's school · trees and pragmatics description: «Soil», a lesson of the geography course of Mova's primary school, sentence by sentence with dependency trees and pragmatics. It begins: Soil is not just dirt. --- [Mova](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) · [this page in HTML](https://mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/) [home](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/) / [corpora](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/) / [school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/) / [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/) / Soil # Soil Lesson 56 of the geography course of Mova's primary school: 17 sentences, each with its syntax tree and pragmatics. The lessons are written for Mova, and their agreed trees are part of Mova corpus 0.4 (CC BY-SA 4.0). How Mova does on its tests: [the lesson at school](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/school-run/geography/56-soil/). - [0](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/0/) — Soil is not just dirt. - [1](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/1/) — It is a living mix of tiny bits of rock, rotting leaves and animals called humus, water, air and countless living things, and almost all our food grows in it. - [2](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/2/) — Dig a deep hole in a garden and you see layers: dark crumbly topsoil, paler subsoil under it, then broken rock, and at the bottom solid bedrock. - [3](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/3/) — These layers are called horizons. - [4](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/4/) — A handful of healthy soil holds more living things than there are people on Earth, mostly bacteria and fungi, while earthworms mix it, let in air and water, and pull dead leaves down to rot. - [5](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/5/) — Soil grows painfully slowly: a few centimetres can take hundreds to a thousand years. - [6](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/6/) — Yet it can be washed or blown away in one bad storm, and about a third of the world's soils are already damaged. - [7](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/7/) — Soil is a mix of tiny rock pieces, rotting plant and animal matter called humus, water, air and living things. - [8](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/8/) — It can take hundreds to a thousand years to form just a few centimetres of soil. - [9](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/9/) — Soil has layers called horizons: dark topsoil, paler subsoil below, and broken rock above the bedrock. - [11](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/11/) — Earthworms mix soil, make tunnels for air and water, and turn dead leaves into rich soil. - [12](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/12/) — Soil texture depends on how much sand, silt (grains finer than sand) and clay it has; clay holds water and drains badly, sand drains at once, and loam, a balanced mix, is the best for farming. - [13](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/13/) — The black soils of Ukraine and southern Russia, called chernozem, are among the most fertile in the world, which is why Ukraine is called the breadbasket of Europe. - [14](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/14/) — Many rainforest soils are surprisingly poor, because heavy rain washes nutrients out and most nutrients are stored in the plants. - [15](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/15/) — Farmers add nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium to soil as fertiliser to grow more food. - [16](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/16/) — About a third of the world's soils are degraded by erosion, salt, pollution or overuse. - [17](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/56-soil/17/) — Soils hold more carbon than all the world's plants and the air put together. - ← previous: [Coasts and caves](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/55-coasts-and-caves/) - next →: [Fossils](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/57-fossils/) - ↑ back to [Geography](https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/school/geography/)