We used concentrations of in situ cosmogenic 10Be from riverine sediment to quantify the basin-averaged denudation rates and sediment fluxes in the Plessur Basin, Eastern Swiss Alps, which is a tributary stream to the Alpine Rhine, one of the largest streams in Europe. We complement the cosmogenic dataset with the results of morphometric analyses, geomorphic mapping, and sediment fingerprinting techniques. The results reveal that the Plessur Basin is still adjusting to the landscape perturbation caused by the glacial carving during the Last Glacial Maximum c. 20,000 years ago. This adjustment has been most efficient in the downstream part where the bedrock comprises high erodibility North Penninic flysch and Bündnerschist, whereas glacial landforms are still prominently preserved in the upstream region, comprising low erodibility South Penninic and Austroalpine bedrock. This geomorphic observation is supported by the 10Be based denudation rate and sediment provenance analysis, which indicate a much faster sediment production in the flysch and schist lithologies. Interestingly, the reach of fast denudation has experienced the highest exhumation and rock uplift rates. This suggests that lithologic and glacial conditioning have substantially contributed to the local uplift and denudation as some of the driving forces of a positive feedback system.
Terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide concentrations of detrital minerals yield catchment-wide rates at which hillslopes erode. These estimates are commonly used to infer millennial scale denudation patterns and to identify the main controls on mass-balance and landscape evolution at orogenic scale. The same approach can be applied to minerals preserved in stratigraphic records of rivers, although extracting reliable paleo-denudation rates from Ma-old archives can be limited by the target nuclide's half-life and by exposure to cosmic radiations after deposition. Slowly eroding landscapes, however, are characterized by the highest cosmogenic radionuclide concentrations; a condition that potentially allows pushing the method's limits further back in time, provided that independent constraints on the geological evolution are available. Here, we report 13-10 million-year-old paleo-denudation rates from northernmost Chile, the oldest 10Be-inferred rates ever reported. We find that at 13-10 Ma the western Andean Altiplano has been eroding at 1-10 m/Ma, consistent with modern paces in the same setting, and it experienced a period with rates above 10 m/Ma at ~11 Ma. We suggest that the background tectono-geomorphic state of the western margin of the Altiplano has remained stable since the mid-Miocene, whereas intensified runoff since ~11 Ma might explain the transient increase in denudation.
As most of the European Alps, The Ecrins-Pelvoux massif (French Western Alps) was extensively glaciated during Quaternary glaciations, leading to strong rejuvenation of its morphology. The massif therefore provides a suitable area to study the efficiency of erosion processes in relief evolution on postglacial timescales. Denudation rates inferred from in-situ produced Be concentrations in stream sediments, obtained from 12 catchments throughout the Ecrins-Pelvoux massif, have been recently shown to correlate with mean catchment elevation in the absence of significant relationships with other morphometric parameters (Delunel et al., in press). We have proposed that the present-day denudation of Ecrins-Pelvoux massif climatically driven trough increasing frost-controlled processes with elevation, providing a mechanistic link for the inferred feedback between uplift, elevation and denudation rates observed in the European Alps (Wittmann et al., 2007; Champagnac et al., 2009). However, cosmogenic isotope measurements of stream sediments do not allow distinguishing the intrinsic spatial variability of denudation within a catchment. Therefore, we have sought to verify our previous conclusions on a smaller scale within a single catchment, from exhaustive measurements of Be concentrations carried by quartz fraction of different sources feeding the high-altitude stream sediment routing system.
Abstract We present 10 Be‐based basin‐averaged denudation rates for the entire western margin of the Peruvian Andes. Denudation rates range from c . 9 mm ka −1 to 190 mm ka −1 and are related neither to the subduction of the Nazca plate nor to the current seismicity along the Pacific coast and the occurrence of raised Quaternary marine terraces. Therefore, we exclude a tectonic control on denudation on a millennial time‐scale. Instead, we explain >60% of the observed denudation rates with a model where erosion rates increase either with mean basin slope angles or with mean annual water discharge. These relationships suggest a strong environmental control on denudation.
In many regions, tectonic uplift is the main driver of erosion over million‐year (Myr) timescales, but climate changes can markedly affect the link between tectonics and erosion, causing transient variations in erosion rates. Here we study the driving forces of millennial to Myr‐scale erosion rates in the French Western Alps, as estimated from in situ produced cosmogenic 10 Be and a newly developed approach integrating detrital and bedrock apatite fission‐track thermochronology. Millennial erosion rates from 10 Be analyses vary between ~0.27 and ~1.33 m/kyr, similar to rates measured in adjacent areas of the Alps. Significant positive correlations of millennial erosion rates with geomorphic measures, in particular with the LGM ice thickness, reveal a strong transient morphological and erosional perturbation caused by repeated Quaternary glaciations. The perturbation appears independent of Myr‐scale uplift and erosion gradients, with the effect that millennial erosion rates exceed Myr‐scale erosion rates only in the internal Alps where the latter are low (<0.4 km/Myr). These areas, moreover, exhibit channels that clearly plot above a general linear positive relation between Myr‐scale erosion rates and normalized steepness index. Glacial erosion acts irrespective of rock uplift and thus not only leads to an overall increase in erosion rates but also regulates landscape morphology and erosion rates in regions with considerable spatial gradients in Myr‐scale tectonic uplift. Our study demonstrates that climate change, e.g., through occurrence of major glaciations, can markedly perturb landscape morphology and related millennial erosion rate patterns, even in regions where Myr‐scale erosion rates are dominantly controlled by tectonics.
