New Mexico Geological Society Annual Spring Meeting — Abstracts

The Desert Soil-Geomorphology Project was one of six such projects across the United States in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s during a period of active soil mapping. The purpose was to develop basic principles of soil genesis, soil-geomorphic relations, and Soil Taxonomy definitions that would increase the accuracy and usefulness of soil maps. The Desert Project was conducted in a 400-square-mile area in the Basin and Range of southern New Mexico where the effects of each of the five soil forming factors could be examined independently and in combination, and the results extrapolated to large areas of the arid and semiarid western states. The project enabled collaborations between the USDA-SCS, local universities, and the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources that led to advances in the understanding of Quaternary stratigraphy, chronology, landscape evolution, hydrogeology, atmospheric additions to soils, soil mapping within the context of geomorphic surfaces, paleoclimate, and laboratory analysis of desert soils. Training tours and publications were an integral part of the Desert Project. The “Guidebook to the Desert Project” by Gile, Hawley, and Grossman (1981), for example, was awarded the Kirk Bryan award of the Geological Society of America in 1983.