Use of Soil Maps and Surveys to Interpret Soil-Landform Assemblages and Soil-Landscape Evolution

 

 


Randall J. Schaetzl and Bradley A. Miller

 

Soils form in unconsolidated parent materials, which make them a key link to the geologic system that originally deposited the parent material. In young soils, i.e. those that post-date the last glaciation, parent materials can often be easily identifi ed as to type and depositional system. In a GIS, soil map units can then be geospatially tied to parent materials, enabling the user to create maps of surfi cial geology. We suggest that maps of this kind have a wide variety of applications in the Earth Sciences, and to that end provide fi ve examples from temperate climate soil-landscapes.