Milankovitch-paced erosion in the southern Central Andes.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36702814.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-36022-0 and PMC identifier 9880006.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
It has long been hypothesized that climate can modify both the pattern and magnitude of erosion in mountainous landscapes, thereby controlling morphology, rates of deformation, and potentially modulating global carbon and nutrient cycles through weathering feedbacks. Although conceptually appealing, geologic evidence for a direct climatic control on erosion has remained ambiguous owing to a lack of high-resolution, long-term terrestrial records and suitable field sites. Here we provide direct terrestrial field evidence for long-term synchrony between erosion rates and Milankovitch-driven, 400-kyr eccentricity cycles using a Plio-Pleistocene cosmogenic radionuclide paleo-erosion rate record from the southern Central Andes. The observed climate-erosion coupling across multiple orbital cycles, when combined with results from the intermediate complexity climate model CLIMBER-2, are consistent with the hypothesis that relatively modest fluctuations in precipitation can cause synchronous and nonlinear responses in erosion rates as landscapes adjust to ever-evolving hydrologic boundary conditions imposed by oscillating climate regimes.