Icelandic volcanic soil resources

Iceland is an active volcanic island with frequent volcanic eruptions that produce tephra. The soil environment of most Icelandic soils is therefore dominated by volcanic ash. Andosols and Vitrisols are dominant soil types. Work in relation to the European COST-622 Action (see preface) has added valuable information about Icelandic soils and a new classification scheme was developed for Icelandic soils (Arnalds 2004). The purpose of this paper is to give a short overview of volcanic soil resources in Iceland, which also serves as background information in relation to data from the Icelandic COST-622 pedons. Some of the information presented here was discussed previously (Arnalds 2004, Oskarsson et al. 2004) in the special issue of Catena (no 56) which presented research related to the COST-622 Action.