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| Titel |
Plio-Quaternary river incision rates inferred from burial dating (Al-26/Be-10) of in cave-deposited alluvium in the Meuse catchment (E Belgium): new insights into the uplift history of the Ardennes massif |
| VerfasserIn |
Gilles Rixhon, Didier Bourlès, Régis Braucher, Alexandre Peeters, Alain Demoulin |
| Konferenz |
EGU General Assembly 2017
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| Medientyp |
Artikel
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| Sprache |
en
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| Digitales Dokument |
PDF |
| Erschienen |
In: GRA - Volume 19 (2017) |
| Datensatznummer |
250152981
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| Publikation (Nr.) |
 EGU/EGU2017-17897.pdf |
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| Zusammenfassung |
| Although the Late Cenozoic uplift of the intraplate Variscan Ardennes/Rhenish massif (N Europe) has been long studied, its causes, shape and timing are still under debate (Demoulin & Hallot, 2009). This is mainly due to the scarcity of reliable ages for uplift markers, such as Quaternary terrace staircases along the deeply-incised valleys or Late Tertiary planation surfaces. In parallel, multi-level cave systems in limestone rocks, wherein abandoned phreatic passages filled with alluvium represent former phases of fluvial base-level stability, record the history of regional river incision (Anthony & Granger, 2007). Here, we present new burial ages (Al-26/Be-10) from fluvial gravels washed in a multi-level cave system developed in Devonian limestones of the lower Ourthe valley (main Ardennian tributary of the Meuse). Our results highlight a significant increase of incision rates from the Middle Pleistocene on, and allow reconstructing the incision history in the northern part of the Ardennes over the last ~3.4 Ma. These long-term incision rates derived from burial ages are then discussed in relation to the existing studies dealing with river incision and/or tectonic uplift of the Ardennes/Rhenish massif (e.g. Demoulin & Hallot, 2009; Rixhon et al., 2011). Our cosmogenic nuclide ages thus enlarge the data pool required to explore the spatio-temporal characteristics of the drainage system’s incision response to combined tectonic and climatic signals.
References
Anthony, D., Granger, D.E., 2007. A new chronology for the age of Appalachian erosional surfaces determined by cosmogenic nuclides in cave sediments. Earth Surf. Process. Landforms 32, 874–887
Demoulin, A., Hallot, E., 2009. Shape and amount of the Quaternary uplift of the western Rhenish shield and the Ardennes (western Europe). Tectonophysics 474, 696-708.
Rixhon, G., et al., 2011. Quaternary river incision in NE Ardennes (Belgium): Insights from Be-10/Al-26 dating of rive terraces. Quaternary Geochronology 6, 273-284. |
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