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The mass balance of soil evolution on late Quaternary marine terraces, northern CaliforniaMass-balance interpretation of a soil chronosequence provides a means of quantifying elemental addition, removal, and transformation that occur in soils from a flight of marine terraces in northern California. Six soil profiles that range in age from several to 240,000 yr are developed in unconsolidated, sandy-marine, and eolian parent material deposited on bedrock marine platforms. Soil evolution is dominated by (1) open-system depletion of Si, Ca, Mg, K, and Na; (2) open-system enrichment of P in surface soil horizons; (3) relative immobility of Fe and Al; and (4) transformation of Fe, Si, and Al in the parent material to secondary clay minerals and sesquioxides. Net mass losses of bases and Si are generally uniform with depth and substantial, in some cases approaching 100 percent; however, the rate of loss of each element differs markedly, causing the ranking of each by relative abundance to shift with time. Loss of Si from the sand fraction by dissolution and particle-size diminution, from about 100 percent to less than 35 percent over 240 ky, mirrors a similar gain in the silt and clay size fractions. The Fe originally present in the sand fraction decreases from greater than 80 percent to less than 10 percent, whereas the amount of Fe present in the clay and crystalline oxyhydroxide fractions increases to 25 percent and 70 percent, respectively.
Document ID
19930067922
Acquisition Source
Legacy CDMS
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Merritts, Dorothy J.
(Franklin and Marshall College Lancaster, PA, United States)
Chadwick, Oliver A.
(JPL Pasadena, CA, United States)
Hendricks, David M.
(Arizona Univ. Tucson, United States)
Brimhall, George H.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Lewis, Christopher J.
(California Univ. Berkeley, United States)
Date Acquired
August 16, 2013
Publication Date
November 1, 1992
Publication Information
Publication: Geological Society of America Bulletin
ISSN: 0016-7606
Subject Category
Geophysics
Accession Number
93A51919
Funding Number(s)
CONTRACT_GRANT: NSF EAR-84-05360
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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