The purpose of this research was to identify the principal soil characteristics that influence the adsorption of munitions constituents (MC) of explosives in soils, through a partitioning model to determine the fate of the explosives. To do that, batch experiments near 1:1 (w/v) soil to solution ratios reflecting field conditions were conducted using a mixture of HMX, RDX, nitroglycerine (NG), nitroguanidine (NQ), TNT and 2,4-dinitrotoluene as MC, where the mix of MC was adsorbed in twenty-five different soils that varied from 4.0 to 43.2 % clay content and 0.07 to 18.23 % total carbon, in an experiment that involved 2 days of adsorption followed by four consecutive desorption steps. The most important result was that for each MC, even if it was in a mixture, were successfully predicted the partition coefficients using the organic carbon, cation exchange capacity and extractable iron as the principal soil characteristics that determine the fate of these explosives.