The Effect of Land Use Change on Soil Type and Clay Mineralogy in Safashahr Area, Fars Province

Nowadays, changing the rangelands to agriculture and garden is common. To investigate the impact of land use change on the soils type and clay mineralogy, four land uses including rangeland with poor vegetation, agricultural land, new and old apple orchards were selected in Safashahr area, Fars province. In each land use, three soil profiles were excavated and described and one profile was considered as representative. After required physical and chemical analyses, they were classified according to Soil Taxonomy (ST) and the World Reference Base for Soil Resources (WRB). Selected surface and subsurface samples were also collected for clay mineralogy studies. Results showed that changing land use did not have significant effect on soil type and clay minerals and all soils consist of mica, chlorite, smectite, kaolinite and mixed layer minerals. Results demonstrated that ST is more efficient compared to WRB to classify the studied soils.