IUSS Congress

[Edoardo Costantini]

Dear colleagues,
I would like to remind you that the deadline to submit extended
abstracts of papers for the next IUSS congress of Brisbane is the end
of October. We the paleopedologists have three sessions to choose: two
specific of our Commission and a divisional, in collaboration with the
commission on Pedometric.
This is the first time that we have all this space allocate to
Paleopedology. It goes without saying that this opportunity is very
important for the future of the discipline and of the Commission
inside IUSS. The success of our participation will influence the
consideration that Paleopedology will get during the next term, before
the IUSS congress in South Corea, in 2014. I understand that the call
is very anticipated, and the request of an abstract that is a short
communication is very demanding, nevertheless, I hope that the papers
submitted will be numerous and I beg all the group members, and in
particular the conveners, to do their best to encourage a large and
qualified attendance.
All the best
Edoardo AC Costantini
President if the IUSS Commission on Paleopedology


Divisional Symposium:
D1.2. Modelling the direction and rates of soil formation in time and
space

Convenor – Edoardo Costantini (Italy)
Co-Convenor - Budiman Minasny (Australia)
Keynote speaker(s )- Ron Amundson (USA) [agreed], Sebastien Salvador
(France)

How we can predict soil development in a rapidly changing environment
is one of the biggest challenges facing soil science. We expect this
emerging area of soil science to develop rapidly in the near future.
Symposium D1.2 aims to bring together two communities who are
contributing to this development. The first group are the
paleopedologists. The second group are scientists interested in
quantitative modelling of soil development. This symposium should
play a key role in ensuring that these workers are fully aware of each
others' fields, and can develop collaborations and synergies.

Time is the last of Jenny's factors of soil formation, and
identification of the nature of pedogenic processes and quantification
of their rates may enable us to estimate the age of land surfaces and
— in combination with other proxies — to reconstruct landscape
history. Understanding pedogenesis in time, and developing predictive
models of this change is also a pressing practical issue when we
consider the future of soils in the landscape. Climate is the first
of Jenny's Factors of soil formation. Climate change can therefore
be expected to cause long-term change in our soils. For these reasons,
it is important to work continuously on increasing our understanding
of pedogenic processes, their rates, and the ways in which they are
influenced by soil forming factors. It is also necessary that we put
our knowledge of soil-forming processes onto a quantitative, and so a
predictive, basis.

Paleopedologists generally use paleosols as archives that mirror past
environmental changes. The understanding of both consequences of
climate change for the direction of soil formation and the rates of
soil forming processes that emerges from the study of paleosols is an
important starting point when we want to predict future changes of
soil formation.

The mechanistic modelling of pedogenesis aims to use understanding of
soil formation to predict soil development quantitatively. There are
two main schools in mechanistic modelling of pedogenesis: the
landscape and the soil profile models. The landscape evolution model
mainly comes from geomorphology, where soil is modelled as a single
layer of regolith, with materials transport in the landscape as a
principal process. The soil profile model from pedology and
geochemistry view it as weathering of bedrock and vertical transport
of materials within the profile. Few models actually link the two of
them. We need quantitative models for soil formation and distribution
in the landscape, and this sessions will aim to encourage such
integration of modelling, and its grounding in the knowledge of
processes emerging from paleopedology.

Symposium D1.2 aims to bring paleopedologists and modellers together.
It shall reveal the current state of knowledge in these fields and
their interface, and will identify those areas where further work
needs to be done if we are better to predict the future development of
soils.

This symposium therefore addresses problems central to the interests
of Division 1. It will include papers on
• Soil chronosequence studies aiming to quantify rates of pedogenic
processes
• Using the degree of soil development of land surfaces as a tool for
landscape history reconstruction
• Soil properties and indices which are suitable to describe the
degree of soil development
• Influence of soil forming factors on the rate of pedogenesis
• Modelling the rate of soil weathering and influence on landscape
evolution
• Energy of soil formation
• Influence of climate change on pedogenesis
• Evolution of carbon and influence on pedogenesis

Paleopedology Commission 1.6

Paleopedology 1.6.1. Impact of aeolian sediments on pedogenesis
Convenor – Peter Jacobs (USA)
Co-Convenor - Stephen Cattle (Australia)
Keynote speaker – Reinhold Jahn (Germany)

This session proposes to investigate how additions of even modest
increments of aeolian sediment (such as loess or volcanic ash) to
underlying sediments or existing soils has influenced the pedogenic
processes that shaped the morphology and characteristics of the modern
soil cover or changed the existing soil beneath. For example,
relative to underlying glacial sediments most fine-grained aeolian
sediments have low bulk density, weatherable minerals and/or high-
charge clays, and readily dispersable clays. Aeolian sediments can
thus influence soil ecosystem properties such as moisture holding
capacity, rooting depth, and carbon storage, and can provide clay or
soluble salts for migration to subsoil horizons, all of which impact
soil morphological expression.


Paleopedology 1.6.2. Genesis and functions of soils and paleosols in
limestone environments
Convenor – Alexander Makeev (Russia)
Co-Convenor - Richard MacEwan(Australia)??
Keynote speaker – Sergey Sedov (Mexico)
Soils of limestone landscapes, being contrastingly different from the
central concepts of zonal soil formation, are a product of interaction
of in situ pedogenesis, limestone erosion and addition of allochtonous
silicate materials. This interaction can result in formation of
diverse soil bodies - from thick red soils with high productivity to
shallow Leptosols with rock outcrops, not suitable for agricultural
use. We invite contributions dealing with the factors and mechanisms
controlling the realization of different models of limestone soil
development under different sets of environmental conditions.
Soil cover of limestone landscapes (karst) produce specific reactions
on environmental change, contemporary and past, natural and
anthropogenic, and develops specific paleosol and pedosediment
records, related to surface and subsurface limestone geoforms. Papers
dealing with relict soil bodies and features in karstic landscapes,
including their correlation with other limestone records (e.g.,
speleothems) and existing datasets on regional and global
environmental change, are welcome.