18

Site number:

18

Authors:

IBC, GGC

Date recorded:

1964/11/02

Reason Sampled:

Soil characterisation

Description:

On the upper northeast slopes of Felsite Island below the ridge crest, on solifluction lobes situated some distance below snow banks; the surface is broad, convex and uneven

Altitude:

250 m

Aspect:

E

Slope:

30 °

Climate

Soil climate zone:

Coastal Antarctic

Estimated mean annual temperature:

-16 °C

Frozen ground depth:

25 cm

Frozen type:

Hard ice-cemented

Frozen comment:

25cm

Geology

Geological setting:

Folded Robertson Bay Group metagreywacke with quartz veins outcrop in places but are mostly covered with a mantle of till and slope drift which has been reworked in places by slow downslope solifluction creep

Patterned ground:

Solifluction lobes, approx 10m wide by 30m long; front scarps are very bouldery with 1-2m risers

Surface weathering or surface features:

surface boulders mainly angular and subangular and unstained, some with thin carbonate coatings

Soil

Soil parent material:

Stony metagreywacke slope detritus with minor inclusion of felsitic material; finer material in the centres of the solifluction lobes

Previous disturbance:

Nil

Soil weathering stage:

6 2 (Campbell & Claridge 1975)

Soil moisture status:

Oceanic subxerous, periodic moisture for solifluction processes derived from thawing of snowbanks on adjacent higher slopes

Biological activity:

Nil observed