Some mountainous areas where the average elevation exceeds 800 metres the climatic characteristics are influenced by the topographic and vegetal cover factors that are responsible for temperature decreasing and humidity values increasing. These characteristics seem to have reunited conditions in the past to the umbric epipedons development.
Being dynamic environments in relation to slope processes action, pedogenic material successions and soils as such with complex genesis and composition are common. In the most of the cases they occur in low hills, mainly in hollows.
Some paleosols (developed from colluvium and elluvium) overlapped by colluvium materials and soils were studied in mountainous areas of Bom Jesus do Itabapoana and Petropolis municipalities.
A great part of the paleosols analysed presents soil characteristics related to Oxic horizons. These paleosols have relatively preserved umbric epipedons that are not so thick than those ones of the soil profiles or pedogenic colluvium that are over them. There are also common paleosols that are directly overlapped by organic materials possibly removed from the slope (pedogenic material?).
A reduced number of the analysed sections showed paleosols formed from elluvium recovered by pedogenic colluvium or directly by organic materials being the majority Cambic horizons.
The main characteristics of these paleosols are the presence of an umbric epipedon with variable thickness due to the decapitation level of it; 10YR and 7.5YR dominant hues with very dark values and chromas; friable consistence, slight plastic or non-plastic and non-sticky and slightly sticky; high organic carbon and organic matter contents (generally upper than 11% for the last one); almost always under 4.5 pH values; average values upper than 50% for Al; medium and clay texture, with about 35%.
In relation to the B horizons, those ones with Oxic horizons characteristics present 7.5YR as dominant hue with values and chromas upper than 5; friable and slightly hard consistence, generally sticky and slightly plastic and plastic; clay and very clay texture; pH above 5 and high Al values; ki and kr relations under than 1.8 in the majority; and quartz domains in the sand fraction mineralogy.