Revisiting the forgotten 1930s and early 1940s Piedmont research of the Soil Conservation Service: landscape erosion, legacy sediments and deeply buried organic deposits.

In the 1930s and early 1940s, Spartanburg County, South Carolina was the focus of intensive landscape research by the US Soil Conservation Service that sought to explore the impact of what we now know as “legacy sediment”, the processes responsible for it and the paleo-landscapes buried underneath it. Much of this research, particularly that conducted by the Sedimentation Division and the Climate and Physiographic Division, has been almost completely forgotten.  This research is as relevant today as it was then, and provides a unique opportunity to revisit well-studied field localities 75 to 80 years after they were first investigated.  In April 1940 the Soil Conservation Service hosted a four-day field conference for some the nation’s most prominent geologists, geographers, soil scientists, and ecologists. The 2017 SEFOP field trip will retrace the path, both on the ground and conceptually, of key portions of the 1940 trip and visit new localities of current research.

Trip leader: Dr. Terry A. Ferguson (FergusonTA@wofford.edu), Wofford College Environmental Studies.

SEFOP is a loose organization of geo-professionals that meet once a year for a Friday evening meeting, all day Saturday field trip, and most of the day Sunday field trip. For more information on SEFOP, contact Missy Eppes, UNC Charlotte (meppes@uncc.edu).