The research will provide comprehensive information on the chemical weathering of surficial rock and on soil development in a mountainous arctic environment in northern Sweden. The present work builds on a famous study undertaken in the 1950s and extends it into a new realm of scientific investigation while simultaneously expanding research undertaken in a single valley into a regional framework. The rock portion of the study includes detailed investigation of how naturally-occurring surface and near-surface rock breaks down chemically, plus the extraction and analysis of machine-polished rock disks which were inserted into several different soil categories five years ago. Soil development is largely chemically driven, and the soil investigation will provide a rare, perhaps unique, view of soil development within the Scandinavian arctic using the American Soil Taxonomy. The research offers two important contributions. First, chemical processes at the land surface in cold environments are still poorly understood. The present work will make a significant contribution to this poorly developed area. Second, climatic forecasts indicate that the most dramatic changes in the foreseeable future will be in the high latitudes. The chemical signals being evaluated in the present work afford the prospect of being excellent indicators of climatically-induced changes at the earth's surface. Such indicators of environmental change are critical if people are to continue to use fragile arctic environments during periods of climatic change. Several aspects of the research embrace cutting edge techniques such as cosmogenic dating, and also include development of what should be an important new dating material for radiocarbon dating.
