Digging into the mechanisms that underlie soil production

Digging into the mechanisms that underlie soil production

Soil produced by the gradual breakdown of rock forms the planet’s thin but crucial ‘skin’. Analyses of a tectonically active landscape along the San Andreas fault aim to address a long-standing question in geomorphology and landscape evolution: what sets the pace at which rock transforms to soil? Changes in rock strength, rather than soil thinning, might set the rate at which soil is generated.