Glossary

Aggregates are admixtures to potting soil (e.g., sand, loam, clay, crushed bricks, lime, algae lime, primary rock powder).

Sod tiles are pieces of grass separated from the ground with a thin layer of soil in which the roots are located.

Meteorology is the study of the physical and chemical processes in the atmosphere. The people who work in this field are called meteorologists. They deal, for example, with weather forecasts and climatology.

Microorganisms, also called microbes, are microscopic creatures that cannot be seen with the naked eye. These include, for example, bacteria, microalgae and many fungi.

The water and air-filled cavities in the soil are called “soil pores”. The pore space represents the entirety of all soil pores. Pore spaces and pore size distributions can be very different depending on the grain size distribution, the soil structure, the content of organic matter and the humus form.

The term describes the grouping of particles of a certain grain size. There is no internationally valid definition. In German-speaking countries, for example, there are the fraction groups fine soil, fine skeleton and coarse skeleton, which in turn are subdivided into main fractions (e.g., clay, silt, sand, gravel).

Plants that have leaves all year round and don’t shed their foliage in winter are called evergreens. Among the most common evergreens are many conifers.

Peat is a substrate of bogs that contains more than 30 percent organic matter in dry matter. Peat is formed by the activity of bacteria and fungi in soils with high water content from the accumulation of incompletely decomposed plant matter in the absence of oxygen.

Manure is a faecal mixture of faeces and urine.

“Vegetation cover” means the plant layer covering the ground.

Sealed surfaces are soils that are separated from the atmosphere by hard surface coverings with virtually impermeable materials (asphalt, concrete, etc.) or by the direct superstructure of buildings.

A volcanic eruption describes the partially explosive emergence of magma from a volcano.

Greenhouse gases reflect sunlight bouncing off the Earth, acting like greenhouse glass. Air pollutants that affect the climate include carbon dioxide (CO2), which is produced when fossil fuels are used, methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and fluorinated gases (F-gases).