Waquoit Bay Reserve, Massachusetts

Soil Types

Because Cape Cod is so young, the glacial materials have not been significantly altered. The result is a sandy porous soil with weakly developed soil horizons. The parent materials for most of the Mashpee outwash plain soils are the sands and gravels mixed with some pebbles and small boulder gravel that were deposited by meltwater streams. Clay and silt lenses generally are found in deeper sediments to the south. The porous soils support rapid percolation of rain, nutrients and contaminants into the subsoil and eventually to the groundwater, a feature that has many ramifications for watershed protection issues.

The rapid leaching of moisture and nutrients from the top soil horizons forms the podzolic soils commonly found in the Waquoit Bay region. Cape Cod's podzolic soils are only a few inches to several feet thick and generally do not support a rich flora and fauna. These soils are highly acidic in nature, and are classified as dry, coarse, sandy soils with slopes of less than 15 percent.

Other soils found in the coastal areas of the reserve include the saltmarsh soils subjected to regular tidal flooding and the muck deposits found in surface depressions where the water table generally is at or near the surface. Beach materials that form the bars and spits off the South Cape Beach and Washburn Island barrier beach complex are composed primarily of sand, but contain some cobbles and pebbles as well. Dune materials, composed of quartose sands, rounded by wind and wave action are very young (between 10 and several hundred years old) and are generally less than 20 feet thick.

Site Description

Back

Next