The B.L. Allen-L.H. Gile Era of Soil Geomorphology and Environmental Earth Science In the West Texas-New Mexico Region (1948-Present).

Thank you for this opportunity to share some cherished recollections of two dear friends and mentors who have enriched our personal and professional lives beyond measure. One, Dr. B.L. Allen, is with us today at this special SSSA symposium held in his honor. The other, Leland H. (Lee) Gile, Jr., who passed on in November 2009, is definitely also here in spirit. For more than six decades, these “consummate environmental earth scientists” have made seminal contributions to the interlinked disciplines of soil genesis and mineralogy, and Late Cenozoic landscape evolution in arid and semiarid regions of the American West. Both have been essentially field oriented, with B.L. remaining firmly anchored to his teaching/laboratory-research base at Texas Tech University-Lubbock, while Lee spent most of his career as a USDA-SCS soil scientist in his primary Desert Soil-Geomorphology Project area headquartered at N.M. State University-Las Cruces. Each of the presentations that follow illustrates three essential points that I wish to cover today: First—both pedology and (my specialty) geology are field-oriented disciplines where sharp boundaries between an indoor classroom/laboratory environment and the great outdoors are essentially absent. Second—the B.L. Allen and L.H. Gile (teaching/research) Era, which began in 1948, has now produced several robust generations of earth scientists who can effectively relate to the real needs of this beleaguered planet, and are definitely not lost in cyberspace. Third—I close with some specific examples of major contributions made by these distinguished veterans of World War II to the understanding of pedogenesis in the context of its close linkage with the geomorphic evolution of the West Texas-New Mexico region, and adjacent parts of Mexico.