Mountains from sand grains: Advances in detrital provenance applied to orogens
- 1Swedish Museum of Natural History, Department of Geosciences, Stockholm, Sweden (chris.mark@nrm.se)
- 2School of Earth Sciences, University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- 3Department of Geology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
- 4Department of Earth Sciences, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
- 5Department of Geology, Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden
- 6Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre, East Kilbride, UK
- 7Department of Earth and Planetary Science, University College London, London, UK
- 8Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
Detrital geochronology is a powerful tool to interrogate the sedimentary archive of (paleo-)hinterland tectonism, metamorphism, and exhumation, and can also be applied to modern river sediment as a first-pass tool to establish regional bedrock ages. The popular zircon U-Pb detrital geochronometer has seen widespread adoption for these tasks (4,173/5,100 results for the search term detrital geochronology also contain the term zircon U-Pb; Clarivate Analytics Web of Science). However, zircon fertility is strongly biased to intermediate to felsic source rocks. Moreover, zircon crystallization is volumetrically limited in metamorphic terranes which do not achieve anataxis (e.g., Moecher & Samson, 2006), and is typically restricted to rim overgrowths which are vulnerable to mechanical destruction during fluvial transport, and which are challenging to detect and analyse (e.g., Campbell et al., 2005).
Therefore, it is desirable to develop complementary provenance tools for sub-anatectic settings, as well as tools targeting more abundant rock-forming minerals for use with small-volume samples (e.g., drillcore). Established alternative detrital phases include the U-Pb system in apatite, monazite, titanite, and garnet. The advent of LA-ICPMS systems equipped with mass-filtered online reaction cells now also permits the routine use of β-decay systems by overcoming parent-daughter isobaric interferences. These include Lu-Hf in garnet and apatite, and Rb-Sr in K-phases including K-feldspar and mica (Rösel & Zack, 2022; Woods 2016). K-phases are also amenable to conventional Ar-Ar detrital geochronology.
Here, we present case studies of emerging detrital provenance techniques, with particular application to modern and past orogenic systems.
Campbell, I., et al., 2005. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 237, 402-432, doi: 10.1016/j.epsl.2005.06.043
Moecher, D., & Samson, S., 2006, Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 247, 252–266, doi: 10.1016/j.epsl.2006.04.035
Rösel, D., & T. Zack, 2022. Geostandards and Geoanalytical Research 46.2, 143-168, doi: 10.1111/ggr.12414.
Woods, G. 2016. Agilent Application Note. Agilent Technologies, Cheadle.
How to cite: Mark, C., Neofitu, R., O'Sullivan, G., Glorie, S., Zack, T., Rösel, D., Barfod, D., Chew, D., Daly, J. S., Clift, P., and Najman, Y.: Mountains from sand grains: Advances in detrital provenance applied to orogens, EGU General Assembly 2024, Vienna, Austria, 14–19 Apr 2024, EGU24-9818, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu24-9818, 2024.
