SPP 527 Subprojekt - Provenance of the Neogene to Holocene sediments drilled by IODP Expedition 341 in the Gulf of Alaska. A single grain geochemical and geochronological study of the glacially influenced denudation history of the evolving St. Elias Orogen using heavy minerals

Basic data for this project

Description

Provenance analysis is a key instrument for elucidating the denudation history of source areas and for quantifying their respective contributions to sedimentary routing systems and the detrital composition of sedimentary systems. Here, a diverse provenance study is proposed to contribute to an expanded source-to-sink study quantifying the interactions between glacial, tectonic, and oceanographic processes responsible for the denudation of glaciated mountain belts. The case study investigates the temporal and spatial evolution of the large-scale mass transfer from the St. Elias Orogen, the highest coastal mountain belt on Earth, to the Gulf of Alaska over the last ca. 10 Ma. The targets are sands, silts and diamicts from two sites on the proximal and distal Surveyor Fan, respectively, drilled in the course of IODP Expedition 341 in 2013. The tools applied include single-grain geochemical analysis of heavy minerals. The combination with U-Pb age dating of zircon and rutile, and 40Ar-39Ar age dating of hornblende will allow for constraining the temporal link between onshore denudation and offshore deposition.