Abstract
Abstract. Here we study the soilscape (soil-landscape) evolution of a field site in the semiarid zone of Israel. This region, like similar regions around the world, was subject to intensive loess accumulation during the Pleistocene and early Holocene. Today, hillslopes in this region are dominated by exposed bedrock with deep loess depositions in the valleys and floodplains. The drivers and mechanism that led to this soilscape are unclear. Within this context, we use a soilscape evolution model (mARM5D) to study the potential mechanisms that led to this soilscape. We focus on advancing our conceptual understanding of the processes at the core of this soilscape evolution by studying the effects of fluvial and diffusive sediment transport mechanisms, and the potential effects of climatic and anthropogenic drivers. Our results show that, in our field site, dominated by aeolian soil development, hillslope fluvial sediment transport (e.g., surface wash and gullies) led to downslope thinning in soil, while diffusive transport (e.g., soil creep) led to deeper and more localized soil features at the lower sections of the hillslopes. The results suggest that, in this semiarid, aeolian-dominated and soil-depleted landscape, the top section of the hillslopes is dominated by diffusive transport and the bottom by fluvial transport. Temporal variability in environmental drivers had a considerable effect on soilscape evolution. Short but intensive changes during the late Holocene, imitating anthropogenic land use alterations, rapidly changed the site's soil distribution. This leads us to assume that this region's soil-depleted hillslopes are, at least in part, the result of anthropogenic drivers.
Highlights
Southern Israel, similar to other regions around the world, was subjected to intensive loess accumulation during the Pleistocene and early Holocene
Fluvial and diffusive sediment transport mechanisms lead to distinctively different soilscape evolutionary paths
Under erosive conditions – when transport rates are higher than sediment supply rates – the fluvial mechanism resulted in downslope thinning in soil depth, while the diffusion led to downslope thickening
Summary
Southern Israel, similar to other regions around the world, was subjected to intensive loess accumulation during the Pleistocene and early Holocene. Studies in southern Europe and in the northern parts of the Middle East have found that anthropogenic activities (e.g., shrub removal, logging/timber extraction and overgrazing in the late Holocene) were the dominant drivers for the extensive removal of soils from hillslopes in many regions (Fuchs et al, 2004; Fuchs, 2007; van Andel et al, 1990) These conclusions differ from studies in the Negev Desert in Israel which found that most of the hillslope loess apron was eroded in the early Holocene, prior to significant human settlement (Avni et al, 2006).
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