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19 <br />started during man's potential period of responsibilit}• to mined-land <br />reclamation irrespective of liow long the soils may have been forming in <br />place before disturbance. <br />Data to support the proposal that soils form largely during particularly <br />favorable episodes has been provided by works such as hbrrison in the <br />Great Basin and by Scott (1960, 1963) in the Colorado Piedmont. Others <br />working in less continental climates of the west coast (Janda and Croft <br />1967, Birkeland, 1967, 1972, 1974) have determined that the bulk of the <br />evidence favored more or less continuous soil development during times of <br />both glacial and non-glacial climates. Birkeland and Shroba (1974) have <br />just completed a comprehensive analysis of the whole question of soil- <br />forming intervals based upon soil stratigraphic and pedogenic data from <br />western United States. They conclude that evidence for episodic soil <br />formation can be interpreted to suggest alternate factors enhancing soil <br />formation such as increased effective moisture, and that non-climatic <br />factors such as attainment of steady state in soil development or influx <br />of pre-weathered eolian soil materials may have caused confusion which <br />led to hypotheses about soil forming intervals. They do not discard the <br />interval hypothesis but take issue with the near-categorical statement of <br />Morrison that such is the norm for soil formation. <br />In the high northern plains there is not a continuous record of paleoclimate <br />for the last 10,000 years. Using data from the eastern Rockies in Wyoming, <br />Montana, and Alberta and drawing comparative data from the Great Lakes States <br />