Falkowski, S., Ehlers, T. A., Madella, A., Glotzbach, C., Georgieva, V., and Strecker, M. R.
Alpine glacial erosion exerts a first‐order control on mountain topography and sediment production, but its mechanisms are poorly understood. Observational data capable of testing glacial erosion and transport laws in glacial models are mostly lacking. New insights, however, can be gained from detrital tracer thermochronology. Detrital tracer thermochronology works on the premise that thermochronometer bedrock ages vary systematically with elevation, and that detrital downstream samples can be used to infer the source elevation sectors of sediments. We analyze six new detrital samples of different grain sizes (sand and pebbles) from glacial deposits and the modern river channel integrated with data from 18 previously analyzed bedrock samples from an elevation transect in the Leones Valley, Northern Patagonian Icefield, Chile (46.7°S). We present 622 new detrital zircon (U‐Th)/He (ZHe) single‐grain analyses and 22 new bedrock ZHe analyses for two of the bedrock samples to determine age reproducibility. Results suggest that glacial erosion was focused at and below the Last Glacial Maximum and neoglacial equilibrium line altitudes, supporting previous modeling studies. Furthermore, grain age distributions from different grain sizes (sand, pebbles) might indicate differences in erosion mechanisms, including mass movements at steep glacial valley walls. Finally, our results highlight complications and opportunities in assessing glacigenic environments, such as dynamics of sediment production, transport, transient storage, and final deposition, that arise from settings with large glacio‐fluvial catchments. Mountain glaciers flow down valleys and erode the underlying rocks. Furthermore, rivers that are fed by glaciers, rock falls, and hillslope processes contribute to the erosion of glaciated landscapes. Understanding these processes and where erosion occurs in a catchment is important because these factors affect how landscapes evolve over time and under changing climate conditions. It is difficult to directly study processes that occur under glaciers because these regions are inaccessible. As a result, computer models of glacier erosion are often used to predict where and how erosion occurs. One technique to test these models is to trace where sediments, that were deposited in a glacial moraine or that are being transported by a river from a glacier, originated from within the catchment. We applied this technique to moraine and river samples from the Northern Patagonian Icefield, Chile, to determine at what elevation most erosion occurred during neoglacial times, 2.5 thousand years ago, and to better understand the influence of sediment size and sampling location along a river on study results. Our main finding confirms previous computer models and observational studies that erosion during glacial times is focused in a narrow elevation sector, where glacier sliding velocity is highest. Integration of bedrock, detrital moraine, and fluvial thermochronometer samples documents spatial variations in catchment erosionApproximately 2.5 ka (or earlier) glacial erosion is focused at the Last Glacial Maximum equilibrium line altitude and limited at higher elevationsA well‐constrained bedrock map of cooling ages is essential for quantifying erosion and sediment routing within catchments Integration of bedrock, detrital moraine, and fluvial thermochronometer samples documents spatial variations in catchment erosion Approximately 2.5 ka (or earlier) glacial erosion is focused at the Last Glacial Maximum equilibrium line altitude and limited at higher elevations A well‐constrained bedrock map of cooling ages is essential for quantifying erosion and sediment routing within catchments