Soil production and the soil geomorphology legacy of Grove Karl Gilbert
Abstract
© 2019 The Authors. Soil Science Society of America published by Wiley Periodicals,
Inc. on behalf of Soil Science Society of America Geomorphologists are quantifying
the rates of an important component of bedrock's weathering in research that needs
wide discussion among soil scientists. By using cosmogenic nuclides, geomorphologists
estimate landscapes’ physical lowering, which, in a steady landscape, equates to upward
transfers of weathered rock into slowly moving hillslope-soil creep. Since the 1990s,
these processes have been called “soil production” or “mobile regolith production”.
In this paper, we assert the importance of a fully integrated pedological and geomorphological
approach not only to soil creep but to soil, regolith, and landscape evolution; we
clarify terms to facilitate soil geomorphology collaboration; and we seek a greater
understanding of our sciences’ history. We show how the legacy of Grove Karl Gilbert
extend across soil geomorphology. We interpret three contrasting soils and regoliths
in the USA's Southern Piedmont in the context of a Gilbert-inspired model of weathering
and transport, a model of regolith evolution and of nonsteady systems that liberate
particles and solutes from bedrock and transport them across the landscape. This exercise
leads us to conclude that the Southern Piedmont is a region with soils and regoliths
derived directly from weathering bedrock below (a regional paradigm for more than
a century) but that the Piedmont also has significant areas in which regoliths are
at least partly formed from paleo-colluvia that may be massive in volume and overlie
organic-enriched layers, peat, and paleo-saprolite. An explicitly integrated study
of soil geomorphology can accelerate our understanding of soil, regoliths, and landscape
evolution in all physiographic regions.
Type
Journal articleSubject
Science & TechnologyLife Sciences & Biomedicine
Soil Science
Agriculture
COSMOGENIC NUCLIDES
PRODUCTION-RATES
HILLSLOPE SOILS
ORGANIC-CARBON
UNITED-STATES
MODEL
TOPOGRAPHY
SEDIMENT
EROSION
CLIMATE
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/21227Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1002/saj2.20030Publication Info
Richter, DD; Eppes, MC; Austin, JC; Bacon, AR; Billings, SA; Brecheisen, Z; ... Wade,
AM (2020). Soil production and the soil geomorphology legacy of Grove Karl Gilbert. Soil Science Society of America Journal, 84(1). pp. 1-20. 10.1002/saj2.20030. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/21227.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Zach Brecheisen
Associate In Research
Daniel D. Richter
Professor in the Division of Earth and Climate Science
Richter’s research and teaching links soils with ecosystems and the wider environment,
most recently Earth scientists’ Critical Zone. He focuses on how humanity is transforming
Earth’s soils from natural to human-natural systems, specifically how land-uses alter
soil processes and properties on time scales of decades, centuries, and millennia.
Richter's book, Understanding Soil Change (Cambridge University Press), co-authored
with his former PhD
Anna Wade
Student
I am a PhD candidate in the Environment program, advised by Dr. Dan Richter. I am
a soil biogeochemist that studies soil development and change to understand how historic
land use impacts contemporary environments.
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