Dmitry Tikhomirov

36Cl exposure dating of paleoearthquakes in the Eastern Mediterranean: First results from the western Anatolian Extensional Province, Manisa fault zone, Turkey

Based on historical and instrumental data, societies in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East have survived at least 150 large earthquakes (generally M > 6) during the past 2500 yr. Beyond this time span, an earthquake chronology is mostly unknown, which hampers the production of reliable long-term earthquake models. Since the only remaining evidence of seismic activity is a bedrock scarp, cosmogenic 36 Cl is the only suitable nuclide to be applied in the determination of the seismic history and slip rate of an active limestone fault plane. In this study,

Widespread erosion on high plateaus during recent glaciations in Scandinavia

Glaciers create some of Earth’s steepest topography; yet, many areas that were repeatedly overridden by ice sheets in the last few million years include extensive plateaus. The distinct geomorphic contrast between plateaus and the glacial troughs that dissect them has sustained two long-held hypotheses: first, that ice sheets perform insignificant erosion beyond glacial troughs, and, second, that the plateaus represent ancient pre-glacial landforms bearing information of tectonic and geomorphic history prior to Pliocene–Pleistocene global cooling (~3.5 Myr ago). Here we show that the Fennoscandian ice sheets drove widespread erosion across plateaus far beyond glacial troughs. We apply inverse modelling to 118 new cosmogenic 10Be and 26Al measurements to quantify ice sheet erosion on the plateaus fringing the Sognefjorden glacial trough in western Norway. Our findings demonstrate substantial modification of the pre-glacial landscape during the Quaternary, and that glacial erosion of plateaus is important when estimating the global sediment flux to the oceans.The contribution of surface processes to the long-term evolution of plateau surfaces on high-latitude passive margins is poorly understood. Here, the authors show that recent glacial erosion on plateaus in western Scandinavia was widespread and may have contributed substantially to the sediment flux to the oceans.