To better predict how landscapes evolve in the future, it is essential to understand how landscapes have responded to past changes in external forcing. Sedimentary archives like fluvial fill terraces and lake sediments provide clear evidence that tectonic and/or climatic boundary conditions have changed over time. With a range of methods, it is possible to reconstruct erosion rates, erosion processes, and also hydrological conditions from those archives. We study fluvial fill terraces and lake sediments in the Quebrada del Toro, an intermontane basin within the Eastern Cordillera of the southern Central Andes. We are dating the sedimentary deposits with 14C, zircon U/Pb, and cosmogenic radionuclides, measuring modern and paleo erosion rates with cosmogenic radionuclides, and reconstructing hydrological conditions with lipid biomarkers. In addition, we perform physical experiments to investigate how rivers respond to changes in sediment supply and discharge. Our aim is to understand how sediment flux and erosion processes have changed over time, and how those changes might be linked to climatic or tectonic forcing.
Associates
- Dirk Sachse
- Hella Wittmann-Oelze (Earth Surface Geochemistry)
- Manfred Strecker & Heiko Pingel (University of Potsdam)
- Andrew Wickert (University of Minnesota and Saint Anthony Falls Laboratory, USA)
- Ricardo Alonso (University of Salta, Argentina)
