Maximum humus horizon thickness as a criterion for identifying the soil standards of the plain Сrimea

When identifying the main categories of soil in the structure of the regional Red Book of soils, it is necessary to focus on typical soils formed taking into account the zonal soil-ecological conditions of the territory. The criterion for the extraction of soil standards can be the initial, pre-agrogenic thickness of the humus horizon, which fully realizes the soil-forming potential of natural factors of climax full-profile soils. But the search for such sites is associated with a number of methodological difficulties. A way out of this situation can be a mathematical modeling of the formation of the humus horizon of soils, which allows you to quantify the legitimacy of the allocation of soil standards in the structure of the Red Book of soils of the Crimea. The proposed method allows going to the cartographic models for determining the maximum thickness of the humus horizon. Analysis of the presented material allows asserting that in the majority of modern soils of agricultural lands of the Crimea, the profiles are destroyed by 30% compared with the calculated maximum thickness of the humus horizon, which takes into account the zonal soil formation processes. That predetermines the search for soil standards only in areas that did not function previously in agrogenic conditions, most often, these are protected areas that take into account the peculiarities of the zonal process of soil formation.