INNOVATIONS IN FELDSPAR LUMINESCENCE DATING AND APPLICATION TO PALEOCLIMATOLOGICAL STUDIES

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Our planet is facing a critical part of its history as modern societies need to implement adaptation strategies to rapidly changing surface environments in response to global warming. The geological record contains sedimentary archives that can be used to interpret the resilience or sensitivity of physical environments to climate change. The main objective of this research program is therein to develop new methodologies in the field of feldspar luminescence dating for assessing the chronology of climate-sensitive geological and archaeological sedimentary archives. The scientific approach is to focus on the luminescence properties of single feldspar grains in sediments. Due to the nature of its solid-state physics, luminescence dating of feldspar shall be applicable to the last 500 000 years. This method can therefore probe 10 times deeper into geological time than radiocarbon and more than 5 times the current age range of quartz optically-stimulated luminescence (OSL). The routine technology for measuring luminescence in feldspar is to use infrared photons to stimulate luminescence, hence the term IRSL. In this research program, we propose to follow up on a novel approach that consists in dating sediments from only unfading feldspars. This novel technology is now possible following the development of new instrumentation in single grain readers, most of these are now available in the Montréal laboratory as a result of a major CFI funding to the UQAM geochronology group. The novelty of this research and its upmost significance is in providing access to a new chronological tool for the natural sciences community involved in the science of Global Changes. My research group and the Montréal laboratory have been at the forefront of the IRSL dating research field for two decades. The development of this new dating technology shall insure this international leadership remains in Canada.