SOILS IN THE GLACIATED HEADWATERS OF SOUTH FORK ASHLEY CREEK, UINTA MOUNTAINS, NORTHEASTERN UTAH
     DOUGLASS, Daniel C., and  MUNROE, Jeffrey S., Department of Geology and Geophysics, 1215 W. Dayton St., Madison WI 53706, dcdougla@students.wisc.edu and jmunroe@geology.wisc.edu
Eighteen soils were described and sampled in the South Fork of Ashley Creek drainage during August 1997.  Vegetation in the study area is subalpine coniferous forest dominated by Pinus contorta, Picea engelmanii, and Abies lasiocarpa.  Elevations range from 2710 to 3331 m asl.  Soils were described on several glacial landforms, including outwash, hummocky lateral moraines, kames, and ground moraine.  Based on the position of the soils with respect to moraines mapped by Atwood (1909), two of the soils may be of Holocene age, 15 of Pinedale, and one of pre-Pinedale age.  Parent materials include basal till, outwash, secondary flow tills, ice contact stratified drift, and lacustrine sediments.  Soil subgroups include Typic Cryochrepts, Typic Cryorthents, Typic Cryumbrepts, and Typic Cryoboralfs.  Typic Cryochrepts are by far the most numerous soils in the area, comprising half of the soils examined.
 All soils are poorly developed, reflecting the pedogenic inertia of the resistant till derived from the quartzitic bedrock.  Most of the soils have a textural discontinuity between a silt loam surface horizon of varying thickness (12-31 cm), overlying sandier glacial sediment at depth.  This surface horizon is interpreted as a loess cap.  Preliminary results suggest there is no correlation between age of the surfaces and the thickness of the loess cap.  This situation implies that the onset of loess deposition postdates the formation of the youngest moraines.  Alternatively, loess deposition may have been continuous throughout the late Quaternary with rates of erosion and deposition of loess balanced at the locations we sampled.