CHALLENGES TO INTERPRETING DEVONIAN TERRESTRIAL ENVIRONMENTS ACROSS THE CATSKILL MOUNTAINS REGION: HELP WANTED

Terrestrial strata of the Devonian Catskill Wedge in New York preserve numerous paleosols within thousands of meters of section. Previous studies have documented paleosols similar to modern day entisols, inceptisols, alfisols, vertisols, and most recently, gelisols. At the local scale, lateral and vertical changes in paleosols can be attributed to proximity to paleochannels across ancient floodplains (entisols vs. inceptisols vs. alfisols), and changes in parent material (alfisols vs. vertisols). Distinctive pedogenic features such as curvilinear fractures, cutans, peds, root traces, and glaebules are quite common and aid in soil classification. While paleosols within individual sections can be studied within a superpositional framework, regional interpretations of multiple sections are hindered by the diachronous nature of strata due to progradation of the Catskill Wedge complex, coupled with distinct periods of sea level change and the influence of foreland bulge migration. This creates a situation in which similar pedogenic environments are distributed across space and time, which hinders interpretations of the timing, rate, and magnitude of paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental changes throughout the Devonian. The Devonian is a critical time in Earth history that records the evolution of terrestrial ecosystems, both floral and faunal, and the transition to glacial conditions at the end of the Paleozoic. As such, the Catskill Wedge can be viewed as a series of deep-time critical zones that record these important steps in Earth history, assuming that the temporal relationships across the Wedge can be established. To this end, a Catskills Terrestrial Working Group is being constituted to address the challenges associated with interpreting these strata. Input is welcome from all facets and scales of geological research.