Soil Development in Relation to Vegetation and Surface Age at Glacier Bay, Alaska

rate of change, over a short period, of many soil properties, with most of the above difficulties reduced to the minimum. This especially applies to those properties which relate directly to vegetation. At Glacier Bay a fairly detailed knowledge of the history of recent deglaciation has been established (Cooper, 1937; Field, 1947), and along with Cooper's (1923, 1931, 1939) classic vegetation succession studies it affords an exceptionally good basis for this kind of investigation. In the present paper the rate of development of some of the characteristics of the forest floor, and changes in the mineral-soil properties of reaction (pH), organic carbon, total nitrogen, calcium carbonate, and bulk density of the fine earth are reported. These changes are related both to age of the surface and to the