Crotovine

Dark crotovines in the lighter loess subsoil of a black earth (above) which locally merges into an Iron Age waste pit (below, to the left), each cut in an archaeological excavation site in the Hildesheim area, Lower Saxony.

Krotowinen (from Russian кротовина, krotowina for " molehills " or "-gang") are burial tunnels filled with loose soil material in soils that originate from small mammals . It is therefore a special expression of bioturbation . The tunnels, which have a diameter of several centimeters to a few decimeters, are usually caused by rodents such as hamsters , ground squirrels or prairie dogs . The animals are driven by winter cold or summer drought to migrate vertically in the ground.

Crotovins are common in the soils of steppe landscapes . They are characteristic of black earths or Chernozems and Phaeozems . In soil profiles they are visible as round humus spots in the subsoil made of loess or loess- like material (B or C horizon) or as light spots made from subsoil material in the humus topsoil (A horizon). The burrows create an interlocking of these two soil horizons .

swell

• Crotovine. In: Spectrum Online Lexicon of Geography.
• Hans Murawski, Wilhelm Meyer: Geological dictionary. 12th edition. Spektrum, Heidelberg 2010, ISBN 978-3-8274-1810-4 , pp. 91, 99, 149. (books.google.de)
• Wulf Amelung, Hans-Peter Blume, Heiner Fleige, Rainer Horn, Ellen Kandeler, Ingrid Kögel-Knabner, Ruben Kretzschmar, Karl Stahr, Berndt-Michael Wilke: Scheffer / Schachtschabel, textbook of soil science. 17th edition. Springer Spectrum, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-662-55870-6 , p. 410. (books.google.de)

Web links

Commons : Krotowine  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Collection item of the month. 11/05: Hildesheim Black Earth - with photos of the corresponding soil profile and labeling of the soil horizons and structures (including crotovines), website of the Federal Institute for Geosciences and Raw Materials