Secondly, I am collaborating with Henri Grissino-Mayer (Valdosta State University), Mary Ingham (NASA), and Charlie Lielble (Valdosta State University) on a reconstruction of the erosional history of "Lyell's" Gully located near Milledgeville, GA. First described by Sir Charles Lyell in the mid 1800's, this site presents an interesting and well document record of gully development over the past 150 years. 

Providence Canyon, one of a series of large gullies in the upper Coastal Plain of the southeastern United States, formed as a result of deforestation and agricultural development in the early 1800s. Sediment eroded from the canyon aggraded the flood plain downstream, dammed tributary valleys, and formed North and South Glory Hole lakes (NGH, 4.8 ha and SGH, 2.5 ha). Sedimentary sequences in these lakes include a basal unit (I) of layered sand and clayey-sand overlain by 0.05 - 0.1 m of mud, fine sand and organic matter, with large fragments of wood (Unit IIa). An upper unit (IIb) 0.29 - 1.61 m thick consists of silt and clay containing discrete layers of sand. We interpret Unit I as floodplain alluvium deposited before the lakes were dammed, Unit IIa as the sediments of the early phase of the lakes when detritus from trees killed by flooding was abundant, and Unit IIb as lacustrine muds deposited after lake levels stabilized and periodic pulses of sand eroded from Providence Canyon were introduced to the lake by backflooding events. The 210Pb chronology from SGH suggests that development of the canyon and formation of the lakes began as early as 1790 and that lake levels stabilized by about 1830. These dates are earlier than previously postulated, but are interpreted as maximum ages because of uncertainty in extrapolating dates to the bottom of the core. 
 Corroboration of 210Pb in the upper portion of the core using aerial photographs and historical climatic records indicates that lacustrine sediments faithfully record recent land-use change. An eight-fold increase in accumulation occurred after the clearing of forest near SGH in the 1930s and 1940s, and a 1.5-fold increase occurred because of road construction in the l950s. Individual sand layers deposited between 1830 and 1957 correlate with erosion at Providence Canyon during major storm events. Since then, downcutting and headward incision by the stream draining Providence Canyon has reduced backflooding to the Glory Hole lakes. As a result regional trends in wetting and drying inferred from precipitation and potential evapotranspiration data correlate more directly with rates of sedimentation prior to incision, whereas individual precipitation events correspond more directly with increased sedimentation after incision. Local precipitation is most important to lacustrine sedimentation after channel incision cut off the major source of sediment from Providence Canyon.  

Reference: Hyatt, J. A., and Gilbert, R. (in revision) Lacustrine sedimentary record of human-induced gully erosion and land-use change at Providence Canyon, Georgia, U.S.A.