Zerathe Swann, Blard P.H., Bourlès D., Audin Laurence, Carcaillet J., Delgado F., Benavente C., ASTER Team
Source
Quaternary Geochronology, 2017,
41, p. 83-96
The possibility of quantifying surface processes in mafic or volcanic environment using the potentialities offered by the in situ-produced cosmogenic nuclides, and more specifically by the in situ-produced Be-10, is often hampered by the rarity of quartz minerals in the available lithologies. As an alternative to overcome this difficulty, we explore in this work the possibility of relying on feldspar minerals rather that on quartz to perform in situ-produced Be-10 measurements in such environments. Our strategy was to cross-calibrate the total production rate of Be-10 in feldspar (P-10fsp) against the total production rate of He-3 in pyroxene (P-3px) by measuring He-3 and Be-10 in cogenetic pyroxene (He-3(px)) and feldspar (Be-10(fsp)). The samples were collected from eight ignimbritic boulders, exposed from ca 120 to 600 ka at elevations ranging from 800 to 2500 m, along the preserved rock-avalanche deposits of the giant Caquilluco landslide (18 degrees S, 70 degrees W), Southern Peru. Along with data recently published by Blard et al. (2013a) at a close latitude (22 degrees S) but higher elevation (ca. 4000 m), the samples yield a remarkably tight cluster of He-3(px) - Be-10(fsp) total production ratios whose weighted-mean is 35.6 +/- 0.5 (1 sigma). The obtained weighted mean He-3(px) - Be-10(fsp) total production ratio combined with the local He-3(py) total production rate in the high tropical Andes published by Martin et al. (2017) allows to establish a total SLHL Be-10 in situ-production rate in feldspar mineral (P-10fsp) of 3.57 +/- 0.21 at.g(-1).yr(-1) (scaled for the LSD scaling scheme, the ERA40 atm model and the VDM of Lifton, 2016). Despite the large elevation range covered by the whole dataset (800-4300 m), no significant variation of the He-3(px) - Be-10(fsp) total production ratios in pyroxene and feldspar was evidenced. As an attempt to investigate the effect of the chemical composition of feldspar on the total Be-10 production rate, major and trace element concentrations of the studied feldspar samples were analyzed. Unfortunately, giving the low compositional variability of our dataset, this issue is still pending.
