Determining Exposure Ages and Erosion Rates of Bedrock Surfaces in Antartic

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Determination by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) of concentrations of the cosmogenic radionuclides on exposed bedrock surfaces provides instructive data on exposure times and rates of erosion for those surfaces. Exposure ages ranging from 10,000 to 5,000,000 years have been determined for a wide variety of surfaces; the oldest exposure times yet reported have been measured on bedrock samples from the Antarctic continent. The goals of the research are: 1) to refine sample-preparation technique to the level that it will represent a generalized, systematic procedure to extract quartz efficiently from samples of a wide range of mineral composition; 2) to measure concentrations of cosmogenic radionuclides in Antarctic bedrock samples provided by collaborators, and to interpret those measurements in terms of exposure ages, erosion rates, and Quaternary glacial history; and 3) to collect further sample in Antarctica for determination of exposure ages and erosion rates.