Studying modern soil profiles of different landscape zones in Hungary: An attempt to establish a soil-phytolith identification key

A set of plant opal particles – phytolith assemblage – found in soils can provide information on the covering vegetation. The phenomena of redundancy and multiplicity usually makes it difficult to directly link a single phytolith to a given species or even to a higher taxanomic unit. The aim of this paper is to present the results of multivariate statistical analyses applied on the data gained from twenty soil profiles and to recommend on diagnostic morphotypes and/or morphotype groups. Correspondence and principal component analyses have been performed on the data matrix composed of over 6000 phytoliths identified in 117 soil samples from Hungary. Based upon the results, soil types representing different habitats can be charaterized by distinctive indicator groups. On the basis of the research data of 20 soil profiles and as a result of the comparative analysis a suggested reference system is presented, which hopefully enables detection of the habitat and soil type through the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of the diagnostic morphotypes in palaeoenvironmental reconstructions.