BIRKELAND-ESQUE SOIL GEOMORPHOLOGY AND INTERDISCIPLINARY QUATERNARY RESEARCH

Pete Birkeland’s approach to using soil geomorphology to reconstruct the geologic past has had a profound impact in a variety of subdisciplines of the Quaternary geosciences. By understanding pedogenetic processes and approaching the relation of soils to landscapes using the classical "Jennyian" clorpt factors, he developed a means of addressing an array of key questions in Quaternary research. Data on rates of soil formation allow estimates of the age of landscapes in one of the most widely used and historically earliest application of the Jenny-Birkeland factorial approach. Recognizing the time factor has also proven useful in understanding how landscapes evolve. Recognizing soils buried in stratigraphic sequences further informs us regarding episodic instability (sedimentation or erosion) and stability (and soil formation) in geomorphic systems. Understanding such changes in local depositional environments may be useful in understanding regional environmental changes such as slope instability or rising water tables. Soils as time indicators and as indicators of geomorphic stability/instability are also invaluable in geoarchaeological research. These concepts aid in predicting presence/absence of archaeological sites and site age (e.g., advanced weather/pedogenesis on a landscape will indicate that "young" archaeological sites will only be found on the surface), in reconstructing occupation history (e.g., multiple occupations may form a palimpsest on old landscapes, whereas multiple, youthful buried soils could contain multiple, discrete occupation zones), in understanding site destruction and burial, and in reconstructing post-burial physical and chemical alterations of sites and artifacts.