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| Titel |
Landscape evolution and soil hydrological change: new insights from sandy soils in the Campine area, Northern Belgium |
| VerfasserIn |
K. Beerten, D. Mallants |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2012
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
Englisch
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 14 (2012) |
| Datensatznummer |
250065740
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Hydrological properties of soils and sediments as they can be measured today may evolve
according to their environmental context during landscape evolution. Linking soil profile
development with hydrological changes of particular soil horizons over time scales of several
hundreds to thousands of years is a typical example of emerging hydropedological research
and is the subject of the current study. For this purpose, a dry podzol profile buried
under younger drift sands was investigated using advanced hydrological (Beerten et
al., this volume (a)) and geomorphological techniques (Beerten et al., this volume
(b)).
The principal results suggest that during the last 10 000 years, geomorphological and
pedological processes have induced changes in saturated hydraulic conductivity values
(Ksat) across the podzol profile resulting in present-day differences of up to four orders of
magnitude. The highest values (Ksat ~ 10-3 m/s) are found in ~ 250 year old uncompacted
drift sand deposits, while low values are typical for the illuviation horizon (Bh)
of podzol soils that developed in Weichselian cover sands (Ksat ~ 10-7 m/s).
Detailed investigations show that landscape stabilisation and podzolisation in such
sandy substrates under pine and/or heather may lower Ksat-values by an order of
magnitude in less than 100 years while higher order changes may take several 1 000
years.
It is concluded that soil hydrological properties display large spatial variability even
within the same soil profile; this variation was shown to have a strong correlation with the
development stage and thus age of the soil horizon. The established relationships may help
explain past hydrological changes and improve predictions of future hydrological changes of
soils in the Campine area.
References
Beerten, K., Vandersmissen, N., Rogiers, B., Mallants, D., this volume (a).
Assessing soil hydrological variability at the cm- to dm-scale using air permeameter
measurements.
Beerten, K., Vandersmissen, N., Deforce, K., Vandenberghe, N., this volume (b).
Chronology of landscape evolution during the last centuries in the Campine area, Northern
Belgium: integrating geomorphological, palaeobotanical, historical and pollution archives. |
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