Chronofunctions for new Mexico, USA soils show relationships among climate, dust input, and soil development

Abstract

Rates of soil development provide critical information about the types and rates of geomorphic and landscape evolutionary processes. Soil development in arid and semiarid regions of the southwestern United States is predominantly controlled by influx of eolian dust, yet our ability to quantify the rates of morphologic development and of dust and carbonate incorporation is limited by available age control. We describe 10 pedons in the Socorro area of central New Mexico and analyze their silt, clay, and carbonate contents. These soils have well-established direct or indirect age control that we used to estimate average rates of dust and carbonate accumulation over the past ~0.5–800 ka. We also computed the profile development index (PDI) for these soils using 10 common morphologic properties and compare our resulting PDI chronofunction to those from northern and southern New Mexico. We find that the net silt-and-clay content increases in progressively older soils at rates similar to the profile-mass carbonate contents, presumably sourced primarily from eolian dust. Our chronofunction comparison indicates that soil development occurs more rapidly in higher latitude regions of New Mexico than in the drier warmer climates of the Socorro area and southern New Mexico. We interpret the N–S regional trend of soil development considering a regional climate gradient. We conclude that greater mean annual precipitation and cooler mean annual temperatures and/or slower rates of eolian dust accumulation into the soil profile at higher latitude northern sites cause the observed differences in regional soil development. This would promote greater mobility of available silt and clay, and also increase rates of soil formation, as indicated by the presence of argillans in late-Pleistocene soils of northern New Mexico.