Jane K. Willenbring

Long-term stability of global erosion rates and weathering during late-Cenozoic cooling

Over geologic timescales, CO2 is emitted from the Earth’s interior and is removed from the atmosphere by silicate rock weathering and organic carbon burial. This balance is thought to have stabilized greenhouse conditions within a range that ensured habitable conditions. Changes in this balance have been attributed to changes in topographic relief, where varying rates of continental rock weathering and erosion are superimposed on fluctuations in organic carbon burial. Geological strata provide an indirect yet imperfectly preserved record of this change through changing rates of sedimentation. Widespread observations of a recent (0–5-Myr) fourfold increase in global sedimentation rates require a global mechanism to explain them. Accelerated uplift and global cooling have been given as possible causes, but because of the links between rates of erosion and the correlated rate of weathering, an increase in the drawdown of CO2 that is predicted to follow may be the cause of global climate change instead. However, globally, rates of uplift cannot increase everywhere in the way that apparent sedimentation rates do. Moreover, proxy records of past atmospheric CO2 provide no evidence for this large reduction in recent CO2 concentrations. Here we question whether this increase in global weathering and erosion actually occurred and whether the apparent increase in the sedimentation rate is due to observational biases in the sedimentary record. As evidence, we recast the ocean dissolved 10Be/9Be isotope system as a weathering proxy spanning the past ∼12 Myr (ref. 14). This proxy indicates stable weathering fluxes during the late-Cenozoic era. The sum of these observations shows neither clear evidence for increased erosion nor clear evidence for a pulse in weathered material to the ocean. We conclude that processes different from an increase in denudation caused Cenozoic global cooling, and that global cooling had no profound effect on spatially and temporally averaged weathering rates.

Mid-Miocene cooling and the extinction of tundra in continental Antarctica

A major obstacle in understanding the evolution of Cenozoic climate has been the lack of well dated terrestrial evidence from high-latitude, glaciated regions. Here, we report the discovery of exceptionally well preserved fossils of lacustrine and terrestrial organisms from the McMurdo Dry Valleys sector of the Transantarctic Mountains for which we have established a precise radiometric chronology. The fossils, which include diatoms, palynomorphs, mosses, ostracodes, and insects, represent the last vestige of a tundra community that inhabited the mountains before stepped cooling that first brought a full polar climate to Antarctica. Paleoecological analyses, 40Ar/39Ar analyses of associated ash fall, and climate inferences from glaciological modeling together suggest that mean summer temperatures in the region cooled by at least 8°C between 14.07 ± 0.05 Ma and 13.85 ± 0.03 Ma. These results provide novel constraints for the timing and amplitude of middle-Miocene cooling in Antarctica and reveal the ecological legacy of this global climate transition.

Large Shift in Source of Fine Sediment in the Upper Mississippi River

Although sediment is a natural constituent of rivers, excess loading to rivers and streams is a leading cause of impairment and biodiversity loss. Remedial actions require identification of the sources and mechanisms of sediment supply. This task is complicated by the scale and complexity of large watersheds as well as changes in climate and land use that alter the drivers of sediment supply. Previous studies in Lake Pepin, a natural lake on the Mississippi River, indicate that sediment supply to the lake has increased 10-fold over the past 150 years. Herein we combine geochemical fingerprinting and a suite of geomorphic change detection techniques with a sediment mass balance for a tributary watershed to demonstrate that, although the sediment loading remains very large, the dominant source of sediment has shifted from agricultural soil erosion to accelerated erosion of stream banks and bluffs, driven by increased river discharge. Such hydrologic amplification of natural erosion processes calls for a new approach to watershed sediment modeling that explicitly accounts for channel and floodplain dynamics that amplify or dampen landscape processes. Further, this finding illustrates a new challenge in remediating nonpoint sediment pollution and indicates that management efforts must expand from soil erosion to factors contributing to increased water runoff.

Field evidence for climate-driven changes in sediment supply leading to strath terrace formation

Along the South Fork of the Eel River in northern California, paleoerosion rates derived from 10 Be concentrations in late Pleistocene strath terrace sediment are a factor of 2 greater than erosion rates derived from modern stream sediment and 3.5 times greater than paleoerosion rates from the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. Using these results as a proxy for sediment supply, we provide quantitative field-based evidence that extensive strath planation is linked to elevated sediment supply conditions. We have used optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) to date strath terrace sediment and find that the highest erosion rates and most extensive period of strath planation occurred during a period of increased precipitation in the late Pleistocene. Based on our OSL data, we estimate that bedrock channel lowering rates have outpaced basin-averaged erosion rates by a factor of three since abandonment of the extensive late Pleistocene strath surface. Thus, our data indicate that hillslope relief has been increasing for the past ~20 ka.

Earth is (mostly) flat: Apportionment of the flux of continental sediment over millennial time scales

We thank [Warrick et al. (2014)][1] for the Comment on our recent synthesis of 10Be-derived denudation rates ([Willenbring et al., 2013][2]), in which we suggested that gently sloping areas, representing ∼90% of the Earth’s land surface, have sufficiently high rates of denudation to produce a

A cosmic trip: 25 years of cosmogenic nuclides in geology

Terrestrial cosmogenic nuclides, produced by secondary cosmic-ray interactions in the atmosphere and in situ within minerals in the shallow lithosphere, are widely used to date surface exposure of rocks and sediments, to estimate erosion and weathering rates, and to date sediment deposition or burial. Their use has transformed geomorphology and Quaternary geology, for the first time allowing landforms to be dated and denudation rates to be measured over soil-forming time scales. The application of cosmogenic nuclides to geology began soon after the invention of accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) in 1977 and increased dramatically with the measurement of in situ–produced nuclides in mineral grains near Earth’s surface in the 1980s. The past 25 yr have witnessed the development of cosmogenic nuclides from their initial detection to their prevalence today as a standard geochronological and geochemical tool. This review covers the major developments of the past 25 yr by comparing the state of the field in 1988 with that of today, and by identifying key advances in that period that moved the field forward. We emphasize the most commonly used in situ–produced nuclides measured by AMS for geological applications, but we also discuss other nuclides where their applications overlap. Our review covers AMS instrumentation, cosmogenic nuclide production rates, the methods of surface exposure dating, measurement of erosion and weathering, and burial dating, and meteoric 10 Be. —In memoriam: Devendra Lal (1929–2012), whose vision inspired the field.

Toward generalizable sediment fingerprinting with tracers that are conservative and nonconservative over sediment routing timescales

PurposeThe science of sediment fingerprinting has been evolving rapidly over the past decade and is well poised to improve our understanding, not only of sediment sources, but also the routing of sediment through watersheds. Here, we discuss channel–floodplain processes that may convolute or modify the sediment fingerprinting signature of alluvial bank/floodplain sources and explore the use of nonconservative tracers for differentiating sediment derived from surface soil erosion from that of near-channel fluvial erosion.Materials and methodsWe use a mathematical model to demonstrate the theoretical effects of channel–floodplain exchange on conservative and nonconservative tracers. Then, we present flow, sediment gauging data, and geochemical measurements of long- (meteoric beryllium-10, 10Be) and short-lived (excess lead-210 and cesium-137, 210Pbex and 137Cs, respectively) radionuclide tracers from two study locations: one above, and the other below, a rapidly incising knick zone within the Maple River watershed, southern Minnesota.Results and discussionWe demonstrate that measurements of 10Be, 210Pbex, and 137Cs associated with suspended sediment can be used to distinguish between the three primary sediment sources (agricultural uplands, bluffs, and banks) and estimate channel–floodplain exchange. We observe how the sediment sources systematically vary by location and change over the course of a single storm hydrograph. While sediment dynamics for any given event are not necessarily indicative of longer-term trends, the results are consistent with our geomorphic understanding of the system and longer-term observations of sediment dynamics. We advocate for future sediment fingerprinting studies to develop a geomorphic rationale to explain the distribution of the fingerprinting properties for any given study area, with the intent of developing a more generalizable, process-based fingerprinting approach.ConclusionsWe show that measurements of conservative and nonconservative tracers (e.g., long- and short-lived radionuclides) can provide spatially integrated, yet temporally discrete, insights to constrain sediment sources and channel–floodplain exchange at the river network-scale. Fingerprinting that utilizes nonconservative tracers requires that the nonconservative behavior is predictable and verifiable.

Early maximum extent of paleoglaciers from Mediterranean mountains during the last glaciation

Mountain glaciers respond directly to changes in precipitation and temperature, thus their margin extent is a high-sensitivity climate proxy. Here, we present a robust 10Be chronology for the glacier maximum areal extent of central Spain paleoglaciers dated at 26.1 ± 1.3 ka BP. These glaciers reached their maximum extent several thousand years earlier than those from central Europe due to the increased precipitation within a cold period between 25 to 29 ka BP, as confirmed by a local speleothem record. These paleoclimate conditions impacted the maximum extent of mountain glaciers along the western and central Mediterranean region. The cause and timing of the enhanced precipitation implies a southward shift of the North Atlantic Polar Front followed by storm tracks in response to changes in insolation via orbital parameters modulation. Thus, these mountain paleoglaciers from the Mediterranean region record an ocean-continent climate interaction triggered by external forcing.

What does a mean mean? The temporal evolution of detrital cosmogenic denudation rates in a transient landscape

In equilibrium landscapes, 10 Be concentrations within detrital quartz grains are expected to quantitatively refl ect basin-wide denudation rates. In transient landscapes, though detrital quartz is derived from both the incising, adjusting lowland and the unadjusted, relict upland, the integrated 10 Be concentrations still provide a denudation rate averaged across the two domains. Because fi eld samples can provide only a snapshot of the current upstream-averaged erosion rate, we employ a numerical landscape evolution model to explore how 10 Be-derived denudation rates vary over time and space during transient adjustment. Model results suggest that the longitudinal pattern of mean denudation rates is generated by the river’s progressive dilution of low-volume, high-concentration detritus from relict uplands by the integration of high-volume, low-concentration detritus from adjusting lowlands. The proportion of these materials in any detrital sample depends on what fraction of the upstream area remains unadjusted. Because the boundary of the adjusting part of the landscape changes over time, the longitudinal trend in cosmogenic nuclide‐derived erosion rates changes over time. These insights are then used to guide our interpretation of geomorphic and longitudinal cosmogenic nuclide data from the South Fork Eel River (SFER) in the California Coast Range (United States). The northward-propagating crustal thickening and rock uplift associated with the passage of the Mendocino triple junction generates a mobile wave of uplift that progressively sweeps longitudinally down the SFER. The consequences of this forcing can be both replicated in the model environment and observed in the fi eld. The SFER contains transient landforms including knickpoints and river terraces along mainstem and tributary channels that defi ne a clear boundary between an incised, adjusting lowland and an unadjusted, relict upland. We report nine nested, basin-wide denudation rates in the mainstem of the SFER using terrestrial cosmogenic 10 Be in river-borne sediment. We fi nd that denudation rates increase in the downstream direction from ~0.2 mm/yr in the upper catchment to ~0.5 mm/yr at the outlet. Using comparisons to the modeled landscape, we show that this pattern of denudation rates, paired with the distribution of relict topography throughout the watershed, refl ect the immaturity of the landscape’s transient adjustment. Later in this modeled transient, the predicted erosion rates decrease downstream before they become uniform. This interpretation of our data has potentially far-reaching implications for quantifying the uplift history and response time of transient landscapes using cosmogenic nuclides.

Identifying Sediment Sources and Sinks in the Root River, Southeastern Minnesota

Excessive loading of fine sediment is a prominent cause of river impairment, not only due to direct effects on biota and habitat but because sediment is often laden with excess nutrients, metals, and toxic substances. Determining the sources and transport pathways of sediment has proven challenging. The Root River watershed in southeastern Minnesota was listed under section 303d of the U.S. Clean Water Act as having forty-three impaired reaches, raising these questions: Where is the fine sediment coming from? What proportions of the sediment are from uplands versus near-channel erosion? How much of the excess sediment loading is caused by modern land use and water management versus the legacy of past land use? Managing fine sediment at the watershed scale requires that we identify potential sources and sinks throughout the watershed, measure source contributions, and understand transport pathways of fine sediment. Here we utilize sediment fingerprinting techniques involving long- and short-lived radionuclide tracers, specifically beryllium-10 (10Be), excess lead-210 (210Pbex), and cesium-137 (137Cs), in combination with other supporting data sets to address the preceding questions. We document a shift in hydrologic regime and that sediment fluxes are sensitive to both magnitude and sequence of flood events. Geomorphic analysis indicates that many river reaches have accessible near-channel sources that contribute the dominant proportion of the washload flux in subwatersheds. Lastly, geochemical tracer analyses of floodplains and hillslope soils indicate that historic erosion has been variable across the landscape and the majority of suspended sediment in the river today is sourced from floodplains and terraces.