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Construction of an Yucatec Maya soil classification and comparison with the WRB framework

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Background: Mayas living in southeast Mexico have used soils for millennia and provide thus a good example forunderstanding soil-culture relationships and for exploring the ways indigenous people name and classify the soilsof their territory. This paper shows an attempt to organize the Maya soil knowledge into a soil classificationscheme and compares the latter with the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB).
Methods: Several participative soil surveys were carried out in the period 2000-2009 with the help of bilingualMaya-Spanish-speaking farmers. A multilingual soil database was built with 315 soil profile descriptions.
Results: On the basis of the diagnostic soil properties and the soil nomenclature used by Maya farmers, a soilclassification scheme with a hierarchic, dichotomous and open structure was constructed, organized in groups andqualifiers in a fashion similar to that of the WRB system. Maya soil properties were used at the same categoricallevels as similar diagnostic properties are used in the WRB system.
Conclusions: The Maya soil classification (MSC) is a natural system based on key properties, such as relief position,rock types, size and quantity of stones, color of topsoil and subsoil, depth, water dynamics, and plant-supportingprocesses. The MSC addresses the soil properties of surficial and subsurficial horizons, and uses plant communitiesas qualifier in some cases. The MSC is more accurate than the WRB for classifying Leptosols.

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