For this Northern Rockies pedological study, Dr. Paul Sanborn conducted field work jointly with researchers from the Ministry of Forests and Agriculture Canada from August 21-24, 2012, at two clusters of sites along the Alaska Highway west of Fort Nelson: near the Tetsa River crossing at km 585, and ~4.5 km west of Toad River at the "Poplars" campsite.
The focus of the study was on soils currently or recently containing permafrost as well as associated soils on nearby sites with warmer microclimates, with a total of 6 pedons described and sampled. One of these, an Organic Cryosol (pedon BC12-08), was documented in a short paper:
Sanborn, P., C. Bulmer, M. Geertsema, and S. Smith. 2022. A proposed Folic subgroup for the Organic Cryosols. Canadian Journal of Soil Science 102: 811–816. https://doi.org/10.1139/cjss-2021-0182
Associated soil microclimate monitoring occurred at this site, and is documented in:
Hasler A., Geertsema M., Foord V., Gruber S., Noetzli J. 2015. The influence of surface characteristics, topography and continentality on mountain permafrost in British Columbia. The Cryosphere 9: 1025–1038. https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-9-1025-2015
Some of the data from both papers was presented as a poster at the Canadian Society of Soil Science annual conference in 2013.
The highlights of the 2022 paper were presented at an online meeting of the Soil Classification Working Group of CSSS on January 20, 2023.
The sequence of site numbers is BC12-08, -09, (-10 was not used), -11, -12, -13, -14, and -15. Note that BC12-13 was described and sampled, but not photographed. An additional pedon designated as BC12-13A was located within ~10 m of BC12-13 on the same terrace, and had what appeared to be a buried fire-reddened layer under a possible buried Ah horizon. This pedon was photographed but not described or sampled.
