hardpan
1
9.4
- noun
- /ˈhɑrdˌpæn/
- Specialized
:
hardpan
- Farmers often struggle with planting when the soil is hardpan, as it prevents roots from accessing water.
- hardpan soil
Examples
-
Acid soils and hardpan layers restrict root growth, not only in large portions of the Midwest and the Southeast, but also in most of the eastern United States, where there is enough rainfall to at least meet crop needs.
Academic text (1997) -
Water stands on the hardpan throughout the wetter seasons of the year, mixing with the clay to form a black, sticky muck.
Academic text (1991) -
Down among the trees, we found a dry creek bed, and we bounced along the hardpan until we hit a sand draw.
Fiction book (1993) -
William occasionally found work digging out hardpan or tending smudge pots.
Academic text (1990) -
Subsoil hardpans have been created by the use of increasingly heavy machinery, as well as by stock trampling.
Academic text (1990) -
The grasses there are highly nutritious because they take up calcium and phosphorus trapped by the hardpan.
Academic text (2006) -
After Tuxtla, the wooded Chiapas highlands fell behind them and the road lay across a dull, hardpan plain.
Fiction book (1999) -
That habitat's flat terrain is usually poorly drained because a hardpan of clay underlies the acidic, sandy soil.
Academic text (2010) -
Over time, seasonal cycles of puddling and drying can lead to the formation of hardpans in paddy soils.
Academic text (1996) -
Tilling deeply to break up these hardpans reduces the soil's capacity to hold water, thereby lowering the yields of future rice crops.
Academic text (1996)
Synonyms
1
9.9
A hard layer of soil under dry land formed by calcium deposits
A hard dense layer of clay in the soil that stops water and roots moving down
Soil made of clay that becomes hard from drying, heat, or chemicals
Surface Forms
Morphology
Etymology
Hardpan comes from the English parts hard and pan; imagine a hard 'pan' or plate beneath the soil that roots and water cannot 'get through'. That's why hardpan means a firm layer of earth that is very difficult for roots and water to pass.