Earth Surface PROCESSES and Landforms

Volume 32, Issue 6

Research Article

Coupling chemical weathering with soil production across soil‐mantled landscapes

Benjamin C. Burke 

 

Arjun M. Heimsath 

Arthur F. White

First published: 17 October 2006

https://doi.org/10.1002/esp.1443

Cited by:55

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Abstract

Soil‐covered upland landscapes constitute a critical part of the habitable world. Our understanding of how they evolve as a function of DIFFERENT climatic, tectonic and geological regimes is important across a wide range of disciplines and depends, in part, on understanding the links between chemical and physical weathering processes. Extensive previous work has shown that soil production rates DECREASE with increasing soil column thickness, but chemical weathering rates were not measured. Here we examine a granitic, soil‐mantled hillslope at Point Reyes, California, where soil production rates were determined USING in situproduced cosmogenic nuclides (10Be and 26Al), and we QUANTIFY the extent as well as the rates of chemical weathering of the saprolite from beneath soil from across the landscape. We collected saprolite samples from the base of soil pits and analysed them for abrasion pH as well as for major and trace elements