Eroding late Quaternary slopewash deposits within a shallow drainage basin near Fence Canyon, on the eastern Pajarito Plateau. Prominent light layer is the top of a fairly well developed soil that was buried by the 50-60,000 year old El Cajete pumice, and that records a relatively stable landscape prior to that time. The juniper tree was rooted in a sequence of post-El Cajete deposits that record episodic input of sediment from the higher slopes. Examination of these sediments and soils suggests that the extreme rates of erosion occurring in this area under the modern vegetation, climate, and land use may be a rare geomorphic event in the context of the last 100,000 years of landscape change.

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