Planosols are soils with bleached, light-coloured, eluvial surface horizons that show signs of periodic water stagnation and abruptly overly dense, slowly permeable subsoil with significantly more clay than the surface horizon. They develop mostly on clayey alluvial and colluvial deposits, predominantly in flat lands but can also be found in the lower stretches of slopes, in a strip intermediate between uplands, e.g. with Acrisols or Luvisols, and lowland (plain or basin) areas, e.g. with Vertisols.

Planosols have typically a weakly structured surface horizon over a horizon showing evidence of stagnating water. The texture of these horizons is markedly coarser than that of deeper soil layers; the transition is sharp and conforms to the requirements of an `abrupt textural change'. The finer textured subsurface soil may show signs of clay illuviation; it is only slowly permeable to water.

Most Planosols are poor soils and are therefore not used as cropland but utilized for extensive grazing and forestry.

Planosols were formerly known as pseudogley soils and today are dealt under different levels of classification hierarchies in national and international classification systems.

Despite of their fairly widespread geographical distribution throughout the continent, Planosols have a relatively small share (< 0.5) among the soil types of Europe.

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