Widespread erosion on high plateaus during recent glaciations in Scandinavia

Andersen, J. L. et al. (2018) Widespread erosion on high plateaus during recent glaciations in Scandinavia. Nature Communications, 9, 830. (doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-03280-2) (PMID:29483526) (PMCID:PMC5827020)

Abstract

Glaciers create some of Earth’s steepest topography; yet, many areas that were repeatedly overridden by ice sheets in the last few million years include extensive plateaus. The distinct geomorphic contrast between plateaus and the glacial troughs that dissect them has sustained two long-held hypotheses: first, that ice sheets perform insignificant erosion beyond glacial troughs, and, second, that the plateaus represent ancient pre-glacial landforms bearing information of tectonic and geomorphic history prior to Pliocene–Pleistocene global cooling (~3.5 Myr ago). Here we show that the Fennoscandian ice sheets drove widespread erosion across plateaus far beyond glacial troughs. We apply inverse modelling to 118 new cosmogenic 10Be and 26Al measurements to quantify ice sheet erosion on the plateaus fringing the Sognefjorden glacial trough in western Norway. Our findings demonstrate substantial modification of the pre-glacial landscape during the Quaternary, and that glacial erosion of plateaus is important when estimating the global sediment flux to the oceans.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: We acknowledge funding from the Danish Council for Independent Research (grantDFF-6108-00226) and Aarhus University Research Foundation. J.D.J. was supported bythe Australian Research Council (DP130104023) at the University of Wollongong and bya Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship at the University of Potsdam. V.K.P. acknowledgesfinancial support from the Research Council of Norway.
• Keywords: General Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology, General Physics and Astronomy, General Chemistry
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Xu, Dr Sheng and Fabel, Dr Derek
• Authors: Andersen, J. L., Egholm, D. L., Knudsen, M. F., Linge, H., Jansen, J. D., Pedersen, V. K., Nielsen, S. B., Tikhomirov, D., Olsen, J., Fabel, D., and Xu, S.
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre
• Journal Name: Nature Communications
• Publisher: Nature Research
• ISSN: 2041-1723
• ISSN (Online): 2041-1723
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2018 The Authors
• First Published: First published in Nature Communications 9(1):830
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License