Landscapes, Soils and Climate of two highly contrasting regions, by Les McFadden

When: Tue, Sep 20 2016 6:00pm

Where: UNM SUB

The 21 Club wishes to thank our speaker, Professor Les McFadden, for an excellent presentation.

Following my recent retirement last May, my wife and I visited two fascinating and remarkably picturesque areas in that are characterized by greatly differing geology and landscapes. The different landscapes reflect both contrasting geology and climate. The earliest humans in these regions arrived during the latest Pleistocene to the early Holocene, but their impacts on the landscapes also differed in key ways. The impacts of ongoing and future climate changes on these two areas over the next few centuries to millennia likely will also be quite different.

Biographical Sketch

Research emphasis on soil-geomorphic, soil-stratigraphic and soil-forming processes and more generally the critical zone in arid and semi-arid regions. Applications of soil-based research to problems in Quaternary studies and geomorphology, including landscape evolution and paleoclimate, numerical modeling studies of calcic soils, and analyses of seismic, volcanic and flood hazards and biogeomorphic studies and evaluation of impacts of late Quaternary climatic changes on dryland landscapes. Chair of Department of Earth & Planetary Scienes 1999-2007. Presently, like fellow 21 Club member Bernd Bassaleck, enjoying status as a working retiree.