Regional Soil Patterns as Indicators of Late Cenozoic Change in the Critical Zone: A Baseline Synthesis for the Landscapes of Peninsular India
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Regolith across the South Indian shield has not previously been mapped. Here we provide a diagnosis of directional and lasting climate change from humid to semi-arid since the late Cenozoic based on evidence provided by mosaics of 1) residual, 2) colluvial and 3) alluvial soils across 700,000 km 2 of southern peninsular India. Results are inferred from a systematic geomorphological and palaeoenvironmental interpretation of 1:250,000 scale legacy soil maps at order to subgroup level, complemented by field surveys and controls of soil parent material—i.e., regolith. The inventory highlights two generations of residual soils: 1) deep Lixisols, hosting low-activity clays and large iron hydroxide concentrations indicative of humid conditions in the geological past; and 2) shallow Luvisols containing high-activity clays and large stocks of exchangeable bases, indicative of drier conditions compatible with the modern climate. Where still present, the relict Lixisol inliers straddle drainage divides and are in the final stages of being thinned or fully stripped by headward stream erosion. They are being replaced by the Luvisols over shallow weathering fronts. Colluvial and alluvial soils, including widespread Vertisols, are used as tools for detecting and mapping different generations of Quaternary flood deposits: fluvial terraces, coastal fan-deltas, and shallow upland palaeolakes. In a region mostly devoid of carbonate rock outcrops, the widely distributed pool of soils hosting abundant accumulations of pedogenic CaCO 3 also reveals the magnitude of silicate bedrock weathering as a process for generating secondary calcium carbonate in the rock cycle, thereby highlighting an under-appreciated contribution to inorganic carbon sequestration in the global carbon cycle. The results and maps produced provide exploration tools for future, more systematic and coordinated investigations of the nature and chronology of Quaternary deposits in peninsular India. This includes assessing their potential for hosting different generations of prehistoric archaeological remains.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".