Brown Hill Soil

Brown Hill Soil a soil characterised by slight or no leaching of clay and iron. The profile is always decalcified, at least in the upper horizons. Alternatively, brown hill soils are drained soils with a yellow-brown to strong brown Dystric Cambisols. The texture is generally sandy loam or silty loam, but may be more clayey in eroded soils over shales. The organic matter contents range from low (<1.5%) under grassland to moderate (2-5%) under forest.

The agricultural potentiality of these soils is generally low or very low for field crops, but low to high for tree crops. Major limitations include very steep slopes, heavy monsoon rainfall, erodibility of most soils, difficulty of making terrace, generally low soil fertility and rapid permeability. Usually more acidic as compared to Brown Floodplain soils and contains broken rock or little mottled sand in the substratum in comparison to Red-Brown Terrace soils. There are about 156,472 ha Brown Hill Soils occupying the gentle to very steep slopes in the Northern and Eastern Hills of Bangladesh ie, in the sylhet and chittagong region. [Md Khurshid Alam]