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Geology; September 2000; v. 28; no. 9; p. 787-790; DOI: 10.1130/0091-7613(2000)28<787:SPOARE>2.0.CO;2
© 2000 Geological Society of America
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Soil production on a retreating escarpment in southeastern Australia

Arjun M. Heimsath*,1, John Chappell*,2, William E. Dietrich*,3, Kunihiko Nishiizumi*,4 and Robert C. Finkel*,5

1 Department of Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, USA
2 Research School of Earth Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, Australia
3 Department of Geology and Geophysics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
4 Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA
5 Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 9455, USA

The functional dependence of bedrock conversion to soil on the overlying soil depth (the soil production function) has been widely recognized as essential to understanding landscape evolution, but was quantified only recently. Here we report soil production rates for the first time at the base of a retreating escarpment, on the soil-mantled hilly slopes in the upper Bega Valley, southeastern Australia. Concentrations of 10Be and 26Al in bedrock from the base of the soil column show that soil production rates decline exponentially with increasing soil depth. These data define a soil production function with a maximum soil production rate of 53 m/m.y. under no soil mantle and a minimum of 7 m/m.y. under 100 cm of soil, thus constraining landscape evolution rates subsequent to escarpment retreat. The form of this function is supported by an inverse linear relationship between topographic curvature and soil depth that also suggests that simple creep does not adequately characterize the hillslope processes. Spatial variation of soil production shows a landscape out of dynamic equilibrium, possibly in response to the propagation of the escarpment through the field area within the past few million years. In addition, we present a method that tests the assumption of locally constant soil depth and lowering rates using concentrations of 10Be and 26Al on the surfaces of emergent tors.

Key Words: erosion • cosmogenic nuclides • landscape evolution • geomorphology • tors




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