Regolith research in Australia

Regolith science is a multidisciplinary, comparatively recent field, having evolved from several older disciplines: geology, geomorphology, soil science, and geography. Initially, practitioners drew on terms from these varied sources, not always understanding them fully or using them accurately, leading to persistent misunderstandings and confusion around terminology.The term “regolith” was introduced by Merrill (1897), who wrote of the incoherent mass of varying thickness covering the underlying rocks, later clarified and redefined in The Regolith Glossary (Eggleton 2001) as: “the entire unconsolidated or secondarily recemented cover that overlies more coherent bedrock, that has been formed by weathering, erosion, transport and/or deposition of the older material. The regolith thus includes fractured and weathered basement rocks, saprolites, soils, organic accumulations, volcanic material, glacial deposits, colluvium, alluvium, evaporitic sediments, aeolian depositsand groundwater”. Or, in simple terms: “everything from freshrock, to fresh air.”