S' OME eighty years ago, when Dokuchaev (Margulis, 1954) distinguished five natural soil zones tundra, podzol, chernozem, desert, and laterite -the stage was set for a systematic study of soils as naturally occurring bodies. Of these, the tundra has received by far the least attention. European investigators, notably the Russians, have made many studies of the northern regions but in North Amer...