Nature Does the Averaging—In-Situ Produced 10Be, 21Ne, and 26Al in a Very Young River Terrace

Andreas Gärtner (1) , Silke Merchel (2) , Samuel Niedermann (2) , Regis Braucher (3) , Team Aster (3) , Peter Steier (4) , Georg Rugel (2) , Andreas Scharf (5) , Loic Le Bras (6) , Ulf Linnemann (1)

1 Senckenberg Naturhistorische Sammlungen Dresden
2 GFZ - German Research Centre for Geosciences - Helmholtz-Centre Potsdam
3 CEREGE - Centre européen de recherche et d'enseignement des géosciences de l'environnement
4 University of Vienna, faculty of physics
5 Institut für Geologische Wissenschaften
6 WITS - University of the Witwatersrand [Johannesburg]

The concentrations of long-lived in-situ produced cosmogenic nuclides (10 Be, 21 Ne, 26 Al) in quartz obtained from a very recent (~200 a; based on 14 C data on organic material) terrace of the Swakop River in Namibia are nearly constant throughout a 322 cm-long depth profile. These findings corroborate earlier hypotheses postulating a homogeneous distribution of these nuclides in freshly deposited river terrace sediments. An averaged nuclide concentration is a crucial and generally assumed prerequisite for the determination of numerical ages of old sediments.

Mots clés: cosmogenic nuclides; accelerator mass spectrometry; dating; river sediments

Domaines: Tectonique; Géomorphologie; Milieux et Changements globaux; Interfaces continentales, environnement

Andreas Gärtner, Silke Merchel, Samuel Niedermann, Regis Braucher, Team Aster, et al.. Nature Does the Averaging—In-Situ Produced 10Be, 21Ne, and 26Al in a Very Young River Terrace. Geosciences, 2020, 10 (6), pp.237. ⟨10.3390/geosciences10060237⟩. ⟨hal-02881040⟩