131

Site number:

131

Authors:

IBC, GGC

Date recorded:

1965/01/16

Reason Sampled:

Soil characterisation

Description:

On the floor of Barwick Valley near it's confluence with Balham Valley, approximately 2.5km SE of Lake Vashka; the site is on the south side of the floor of a large kettlehole-like depression in the valley floor

Altitude:

550 m

Aspect:

Nil

Slope:

0 °

Climate

Soil climate zone:

Central mountains

Estimated mean annual temperature:

-23 °C

Frozen ground depth:

0 cm

Frozen type:

Frozen comment:

Geology

Geological setting:

Tills on the lower Barwick Valley were mapped by Calkin as Bull Drift, the third of a sequence of glacial deposits; in Barwick Valley, Bull Drift deposits may have originated from the East, in part due to the earlier expansion of the Ross Ice Shelf and the inland invasion of it's ice into the Dry Valleys; some of the materials on the floor of the hollow have probably been blown in from adjacent surfaces and there may also have been some fluvial sorting from times when the depression was occupied by a lake

Patterned ground:

Nil

Surface weathering or surface features:

A smooth pebble surface many of which have been wind abraded

Soil

Soil parent material:

Reworked Bull Drift till and windblown/fluvial detritus

Previous disturbance:

Nil

Soil weathering stage:

3 (Campbell & Claridge 1975)

Soil moisture status:

Oceanic subxerous; the moisture status and site is influenced by seepages and accumulation of water into the hollow

Biological activity:

Nil observed