HabitatMech

surface soil

ENVO:02000059 ·resolve ·TERRESTRIAL ·EXACT REVIEWED

A soil consisting of the upper layer of soil on the surface consisting of loose material capable of supporting life composed of a mixture of mineral and organic matter. — ENVO

Source attestations

Each upstream vocabulary's own account of this habitat. Assertion counts are per-source units and are not comparable across sources — GOLD counts organisms, BacDive strains, PREGO taxa.

What each upstream vocabulary says about this habitat

Source	Label / path	Assertions	Unit
GOLD	Environmental > Terrestrial > Soil > Temperate forest > A horizon/Topsoil	—
GOLD	Environmental > Terrestrial > Soil > Tropical forest > A horizon/Topsoil	1	ORGANISM
GOLD	Environmental > Terrestrial > Soil > Boreal forest/Taiga > A horizon/Topsoil	—
GOLD	Environmental > Terrestrial > Soil > Pasture > A horizon/Topsoil	—
GOLD	Environmental > Terrestrial > Soil > Laurel/Subtropical forest > A horizon/Topsoil	—
PREGO	surface soil	1784	TAXON

Broader habitats

• pasture ENVO:00000266
• soil ENVO:00001998
• subpolar coniferous forest biome ENVO:01000250
• tropical forest ENVO:01001803
• subtropical forest ENVO:01001804
• temperate forest ENVO:01001805

Associated taxa

Taxa reported from this habitat, which is weaker than being characteristic of it. rank is out of pool: a high rank in a pool of thousands of near-tied scores is a weak claim. Entries corroborated by a second, independent source are listed first.

Taxa reported from this habitat

Taxon	Source	Rank	Pool	Corroborated
Methylobacterium sp. 4-46 NCBITaxon:426117	PREGO	1	1784
Acidobacterium capsulatum ATCC 51196 NCBITaxon:240015	PREGO	2	1784
Terriglobus saanensis SP1PR4 NCBITaxon:401053	PREGO	3	1784
Syntrophobacter fumaroxidans MPOB NCBITaxon:335543	PREGO	4	1784
Gemmatimonas aurantiaca T-27 NCBITaxon:379066	PREGO	5	1784
Isosphaera pallida ATCC 43644 NCBITaxon:575540	PREGO	6	1784
Bradyrhizobium diazoefficiens USDA 110 NCBITaxon:224911	PREGO	7	1784
Nitrospira defluvii NCBITaxon:330214	PREGO	8	1784
Pirellula staleyi DSM 6068 NCBITaxon:530564	PREGO	9	1784
Haliangium ochraceum DSM 14365 NCBITaxon:502025	PREGO	10	1784
Bdellovibrio bacteriovorus HD100 NCBITaxon:264462	PREGO	11	1784
Geotalea daltonii FRC-32 NCBITaxon:316067	PREGO	12	1784
Plesiocystis pacifica SIR-1 NCBITaxon:391625	PREGO	13	1784
Planctopirus limnophila DSM 3776 NCBITaxon:521674	PREGO	14	1784
Blastopirellula marina DSM 3645 NCBITaxon:314230	PREGO	15	1784
Sorangium cellulosum NCBITaxon:56	PREGO	16	1784
Parachlamydia acanthamoebae str. Hall's coccus NCBITaxon:159254	PREGO	17	1784
Nitrobacter sp. Nb-311A NCBITaxon:314253	PREGO	18	1784
Conexibacter woesei DSM 14684 NCBITaxon:469383	PREGO	19	1784
Gimesia maris DSM 8797 NCBITaxon:344747	PREGO	20	1784
Anaeromyxobacter sp. K NCBITaxon:447217	PREGO	21	1784
Allostigmatella aurantiaca DW4/3-1 NCBITaxon:378806	PREGO	22	1784
Rhodopseudomonas palustris DX-1 NCBITaxon:652103	PREGO	23	1784
Verrucomicrobium spinosum DSM 4136 = JCM 18804 NCBITaxon:240016	PREGO	24	1784
Beggiatoa sp. PS NCBITaxon:422289	PREGO	25	1784

Also called

• A horizon/Topsoil — GOLD
• surface soils — PREGO
• topsoil — ENVO

Curation

What a curator decided about this record, and why. A record built from several source concepts can carry one decision per concept.

1. GROUND 2026-08-12 · claude-opus-5

   Grounded to ENVO:02000059 'surface soil' (CLOSE). The A horizon is the topsoil; ENVO's surface soil carries topsoil as a synonym. Path: Environmental > Terrestrial > Soil > Tropical forest > A horizon/Topso (source concept habitatmech:GOLD.160a1f9808)

2. GROUND 2026-08-12 · claude-opus-5

   Grounded to ENVO:02000059 'surface soil' (CLOSE). The A horizon is the topsoil; ENVO's surface soil carries topsoil as a synonym. Path: Environmental > Terrestrial > Soil > Laurel/Subtropical forest > A hor (source concept habitatmech:GOLD.224d905e99)

3. GROUND 2026-08-12 · claude-opus-5

   Grounded to ENVO:02000059 'surface soil' (CLOSE). The A horizon is the topsoil; ENVO's surface soil carries topsoil as a synonym. Path: Environmental > Terrestrial > Soil > Boreal forest/Taiga > A horizon/T (source concept habitatmech:GOLD.43959eab56)

4. GROUND 2026-08-12 · claude-opus-5

   Grounded to ENVO:02000059 'surface soil' (CLOSE). The A horizon is the topsoil; ENVO's surface soil carries topsoil as a synonym. Path: Environmental > Terrestrial > Soil > Temperate forest > A horizon/Tops (source concept habitatmech:GOLD.673a4b9b7b)

5. GROUND 2026-08-12 · claude-opus-5

   Grounded to ENVO:02000059 'surface soil' (CLOSE). The A horizon is the topsoil; ENVO's surface soil carries topsoil as a synonym. Path: Environmental > Terrestrial > Soil > Pasture > A horizon/Topsoil (source concept habitatmech:GOLD.ed11bccaa8)

6. REVIEW 2026-08-13 · claude-opus-5

   Reviewed and endorsed the seeder's own resolution. Multi-source review pass: this record is attested by more than one independent vocabulary, and this source's label or path was read against the record's ontology term to check the merge is right. It agrees. Source concepts in the same pass whose labels did not agree were re-decided rather than endorsed; see the pass's other decisions of the same date. (source concept habitatmech:PREGO.ef9e2a8466)

Provenance

Generated by scripts/seed_from_sources.py from the committed inventories in data/raw/. View the record.