gley

…gentle slopes throughout Japan, while gley (sticky, blue-gray compact) soils are found in the poorly drained lowlands. Peat soils occupy the moors in Hokkaido and Tōhoku. Muck (dark soil, containing a high percentage of organic matter) and gley paddy soils are the products of years of rice cultivation. Polder soils…

The swamps have gley soils (having a sticky layer of clay under the waterlogged surface). The soils of the peninsula, like the rock types and the topography, are highly mixed and varied. Most of the best soils there are of brown forest type or of red or yellow…

…drained, the soils being either gleys (clayey soils in which the substrate is bluish gray, generally sticky, and often structureless because of excessive moisture), groundwater laterites, grumosols (soils with a high content of expanding clays), or planosols (a type of soil found in humid climates in which soluble salts and…