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Pleistocene Evolution of a Scandinavian Plateau Landscape
- Source :
- Andersen, J L, Egholm, D L, Knudsen, M F, Linge, H, Jansen, J D, Goodfellow, B W, Pedersen, V K, Tikhomirov, D, Olsen, J & Fredin, O 2018, ' Pleistocene Evolution of a Scandinavian Plateau Landscape ', Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface, vol. 123, no. 12, pp. 3370-3387 . https://doi.org/10.1029/2018JF004670, Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface
- Publication Year :
- 2018
- Publisher :
- American Geophysical Union (AGU), 2018.
-
Abstract
- The origins and Pleistocene evolution of plateau landscapes along passive continental margins of the North Atlantic have been debated for more than a century. A key question in this debate concerns whether glacial and periglacial surface processes have substantially eroded plateau areas during late Cenozoic climatic cooling or whether the plateaus have mainly been protected from erosion by cold-based and largely nonerosive ice sheets. Here we investigate the Pleistocene evolution of a prominent plateau landscape in Reinheimen National Park, southern Norway. We estimate erosion rates across the plateau via inverse modeling of 141 new cosmogenic 10Be and 26Al measurements in regolith profiles and bedrock. We combine these results with sedimentological analyses of the regolith. In the vicinity of Reinheimen's regolith-covered summits, the combination of uniformly slow erosion (50 m/Myr), possibly due to episodic glacial erosion. Despite some indications of chemical alteration, such as grusic saprolite and small amounts of secondary minerals, the fine regolith comprises low clay/silt ratios and is dominated by primary minerals with no sign of dissolution. Together with our modeled erosion rates, this indicates that the regolith cover formed, and continues to develop, during the cold climate of the Late Pleistocene.
- Subjects :
- Plateau
geography.geographical_feature_category
010504 meteorology & atmospheric sciences
Pleistocene
010502 geochemistry & geophysics
01 natural sciences
Paleontology
Glacial erosion
in-situ 10Be/26Al
Geophysics
Geography
Continental margin
Periglacial processes
Cosmogenic nuclides
Cosmogenic nuclide
Mountain plateaus
Regolith weathering
0105 earth and related environmental sciences
Earth-Surface Processes
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 21699011 and 21699003
- Volume :
- 123
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi.dedup.....097dfe844011d4733a220559f1ebde5a