Introducing
Bombturbation, A Singular Type of Soil Disturbance and Mixing
Joseph P. Hupy and Randall J. Schaetzl
This article introduces the term
"bombturbation" for cratering of the soil surface and mixing of the
soil by explosive munitions, usually during warfare or related activities.
Depending on exactly where the explosion occurs (above, on, or below the soil
surface), bombturbation excavates a volume of soil from the site of impact,
forming a crater and spreading much of the ejecta out as a surrounding rim of
mixed, but sometimes slightly sorted, debris. Because such explosions are
nonselective, that is, all of the material removed is mixed and redistributed,
bombturbation is often a proisotropic form of pedoturbation-causing existing
soil horizons to be entirely destroyed or intimately mixed. Although
anthropogenically linked, bombturbation fits most appropriately under the
existing pedoturbation category of "impacturbation." Unlike the rare
instances of extraterrestrial (meteoroid) impacts, impacturbation by bombs and
munitions is common worldwide; on some battlefields, it is so prominent that
little or none of the original soil surface remains undisturbed. Indeed, many
soils and landscapes that have undergone bombturbation are so pedogenically and
topographically altered, largely because of the long-lasting craters left behind,
that the soils within the craters may have shifted onto a new pedogenic
pathway-something that many other forms of pedoturbation often cannot
accomplish. We use examples, mainly from the World War I battle of