Session at American Geophysical Union’s 46th annual Fall Meeting in San Francisco, California, 9-13 December 2013: Earth’s Soils and Critical Zones as “Polygenetic Paleosols”
http://fallmeeting.agu.org/2013/
Time to a soil or a critical zone means duration but also the particular time in Earth’s history during which the soil/critical zone has developed. Most soils and critical zones have long enough lifetimes to have experienced highly variable climates, biota, and geomorphologies, and thus to be polygenetic. Even since the late Pleistocene, variable environments have forced soils and critical zones across thresholds (exhausting weatherable minerals) and others to take new trajectories altogether (accruing soil organic matter, loess, and illuvial salts or clays). Presentations and posters are invited that explore natural or human-altered soils and critical zones as polygenetic systems with archival properties that over time are accumulated or erased by variable environmental forcings.
Please contact Daniel Richter for more information, e-mail: drichter@duke.edu.