Use of soil maps and surveys to interpret soil-landform assemblages and soil-landscape evolution

Abstract

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 identified 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 surficial geology. We suggest that maps of this kind have a wide variety of applications in the Earth Sciences, and to that end provide five examples from temperate climate soil-landscapes.