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Shale Weathering Rates Across A Continental-Scale Climosequence, Ashlee L.D. Dere, Tim White, Lixin Jin, David Harbor, Meredith Townsend, Susan L. Brantley

Geography and Geology Faculty Proceedings & Presentations

A transect of sites has been established in North America and England as part of the Critical Zone Exploration Network (CZEN) to investigate the rates of soil formation across a climate gradient. Sites reported here are all underlain by an organic-poor, iron-rich Silurian-age shale, providing a constant parent material lithology from which soil is forming. This climosequence includes relatively cold and wet sites in Wales, New York and Pennsylvania, with temperature increasing to the south in Virginia, Tennessee and Alabama. Puerto Rico provides a warm/wet end member for the transect, although this site does not lie on the same shale …