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| Open AccessLandscape dynamics and the Phanerozoic diversification of the biosphere
A model of sediment flux from the land to the oceans over the Phanerozoic eon explains differences in the fossil records of marine animal genera and land plant genera.
- Tristan Salles
- , Laurent Husson
- & Beatriz Hadler Boggiani
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Article
| Open AccessRock organic carbon oxidation CO2 release offsets silicate weathering sink
Silicate weathering of uplifted rock depletes atmospheric CO2, but oxidation of revealed rock organic carbon supplies CO2, offsetting depletion to a degree dependent on regional geological history.
- Jesse R. Zondervan
- , Robert G. Hilton
- & Mateja Ogrič
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Article |
Medieval demise of a Himalayan giant summit induced by mega-landslide
Observations and samples from the central Himalayas show that a giant rockslide occurring around 1190 ad in the Annapurna massif led to the collapse of an elevated palaeo-summit, illustrating the episodic mode of erosion of the glaciated high relief by mega-rockslides.
- Jérôme Lavé
- , Cyrielle Guérin
- & Valier Galy
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Article |
Rapid, buoyancy-driven ice-sheet retreat of hundreds of metres per day
Analysis of more than 7,600 corrugation ridges on the Norwegian continental shelf shows that rapid grounding-line retreat of several hundred metres per day occurred across low-gradient ice-sheet beds during the last deglaciation.
- Christine L. Batchelor
- , Frazer D. W. Christie
- & Julian A. Dowdeswell
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Article |
Grain shape effects in bed load sediment transport
Theoretical and experimental analysis of the effect of grain shape in bed load sediment transport is performed and a shape-corrected sediment transport law that provides greater accuracy in predictions is proposed.
- Eric Deal
- , Jeremy G. Venditti
- & J. Taylor Perron
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Article |
Topography of mountain belts controlled by rheology and surface processes
Using the new Beaumont number presented, it is concluded that the topographic evolution of collisional mountain belts is determined by the combination of plate velocity, crustal rheology and surface process efficiency.
- Sebastian G. Wolf
- , Ritske S. Huismans
- & Xiaoping Yuan
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Article |
Fine-regolith production on asteroids controlled by rock porosity
The absence of fine regolith on the asteroid Bennu is due to the high porosity of its rocks, which compress rather than fragment after impacts and exhibit slow thermal cracking.
- S. Cambioni
- , M. Delbo
- & D. S. Lauretta
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Article |
The importance of lake breach floods for valley incision on early Mars
Lake breach flooding rapidly eroded almost a quarter of the volume of incised valleys on early Mars, influencing the topography of the wider Martian landscape.
- Timothy A. Goudge
- , Alexander M. Morgan
- & Caleb I. Fassett
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Article |
Bennu’s near-Earth lifetime of 1.75 million years inferred from craters on its boulders
Analysis of the size and depth of craters on boulders on the asteroid (101955) Bennu indicates that Bennu has been in near-Earth space for 1.75 ± 0.75 million years.
- R.-L. Ballouz
- , K. J. Walsh
- & D. S. Lauretta
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Article |
Megathrust shear force controls mountain height at convergent plate margins
Simulations using a force balance model match mountain heights observed around the globe, suggesting that mountain elevation is almost completely controlled by tectonic forces rather than erosion.
- Armin Dielforder
- , Ralf Hetzel
- & Onno Oncken
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Letter |
Aridity is expressed in river topography globally
A global dataset of river longitudinal profiles shows that river profiles become straighter with increasing aridity and numerical modelling suggests that this can be explained by rainfall–runoff regimes in different climate zones.
- Shiuan-An Chen
- , Katerina Michaelides
- & Michael Bliss Singer
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Letter |
Self-formed bedrock waterfalls
Even in the absence of external perturbations, waterfalls can gradually form from planar bedrock riverbeds as a result of unstable interactions between flow hydraulics, sediment transport and bedrock erosion.
- Joel S. Scheingross
- , Michael P. Lamb
- & Brian M. Fuller
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Letter |
Transience of the North American High Plains landscape and its impact on surface water
The High Plains region of North America is in a transient state, with a younger, efficient network of river channels progressively cannibalizing an older, less efficient region, aiding water retention for wetlands and groundwater recharge.
- Sean D. Willett
- , Scott W. McCoy
- & Helen W. Beeson
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Letter |
Spatial correlation bias in late-Cenozoic erosion histories derived from thermochronology
Reported acceleration of erosion in mountainous landscapes during the late Cenozoic is the result of combining thermochronology data with disparate exhumation histories, thereby converting spatial variations in erosion rates into temporal increases.
- Taylor F. Schildgen
- , Pieter A. van der Beek
- & Rasmus C. Thiede
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Letter |
Timing of oceans on Mars from shoreline deformation
Ancient shorelines on Mars must have formed before and during the emplacement of the Tharsis volcanic province, instead of afterwards as previously assumed, suggesting that oceans on Mars formed early.
- Robert I. Citron
- , Michael Manga
- & Douglas J. Hemingway
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Letter |
An early modern human presence in Sumatra 73,000–63,000 years ago
Morphological analysis of teeth found at Lida Ajer shows that these belong to Homo sapiens, indicating that modern humans were in Sumatra between 73,000 and 63,000 years ago.
- K. E. Westaway
- , J. Louys
- & B. Sulistyanto
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Letter |
Abrasion-set limits on Himalayan gravel flux
The amount of coarse gravel transported out of the Himalayan mountains by rivers is insensitive to catchment size, because the majority of gravel sourced more than 100 kilometres upstream of the mountain front is abraded into sand before it reaches the Ganga Plain.
- Elizabeth H. Dingle
- , Mikaël Attal
- & Hugh D. Sinclair
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Letter |
Penitentes as the origin of the bladed terrain of Tartarus Dorsa on Pluto
Simulations of Pluto suggest that the sharp ridges in the Tartarus Dorsa region of Pluto are penitentes that formed over the past tens of millions of years.
- John E. Moores
- , Christina L. Smith
- & Scott D. Guzewich
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Letter |
Quantifying crater production and regolith overturn on the Moon with temporal imaging
High-resolution ‘before and after’ imaging of the Moon is used to quantify the rate of crater production and provide insights into the cratering process.
- Emerson J. Speyerer
- , Reinhold Z. Povilaitis
- & Robert V. Wagner
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Letter |
Progressive incision of the Channeled Scablands by outburst floods
Simulations of water flow and erosion in Moses Coulee suggest that the floods that carved this canyon only partially filled it, implying much lower flood discharges than previously thought.
- Isaac J. Larsen
- & Michael P. Lamb
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Letter |
Fission and reconfiguration of bilobate comets as revealed by 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko
A modelling study of the bilobate nucleus of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko reveals that it has spun much faster in the past, but that its chaotically changing spin rate has so far prevented it from splitting; eventually the two lobes will separate, but they will be unable to escape each other and will ultimately merge again—a situation that seems to be common among cometary nuclei.
- Masatoshi Hirabayashi
- , Daniel J. Scheeres
- & Timothy Bowling
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Letter |
Chemical weathering as a mechanism for the climatic control of bedrock river incision
Climate-dependent chemical weathering is found to control the erodibility of bedrock-floored rivers across a rainfall gradient on the Kohala Peninsula, Hawai‘i; river erosion models that incorporate this process could improve the assessment of climatic controls from topographic data and the understanding of climatic feedbacks in landscape evolution models.
- Brendan P. Murphy
- , Joel P. L. Johnson
- & Leonard S. Sklar
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Letter |
Late Tharsis formation and implications for early Mars
By calculating the rotational figure of Mars and its surface topography before the Tharsis volcanic region caused true polar wander, it is shown that Tharsis formed during the Noachian and Hesperian periods at about the same time as the valley networks; early Mars climate simulations suggest icy precipitation in a latitudinal band in the southern hemisphere.
- Sylvain Bouley
- , David Baratoux
- & Francois Costard
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Letter |
Observed latitudinal variations in erosion as a function of glacier dynamics
Erosion and velocity data from 15 outlet glaciers covering temperate to polar glacier thermal regimes from Patagonia to the Antarctic Peninsula reveal that over the past century the basin-averaged erosion rates vary by three orders of magnitude as a function of climate across this latitudinal transect.
- Michéle Koppes
- , Bernard Hallet
- & Katherine Boldt
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Letter |
Two independent and primitive envelopes of the bilobate nucleus of comet 67P
The ‘onion-like’ stratification of the two lobes of the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko reveals that its unusual shape is the result of a gentle collision merging two kilometre-sized objects in the early stages of the Solar System.
- Matteo Massironi
- , Emanuele Simioni
- & Jean-Baptiste Vincent
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Letter |
In situ low-relief landscape formation as a result of river network disruption
The relict landscapes of southeast Tibet are being formed in situ as a result of river drainage reorganization that renders rivers unable to balance tectonic uplift, so these landscapes may not provide an unaltered record of past geomorphic conditions.
- Rong Yang
- , Sean D. Willett
- & Liran Goren
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Letter |
Higher-than-predicted saltation threshold wind speeds on Titan
Wind tunnel experiments designed to simulate the conditions on Saturn’s moon Titan yield threshold wind speeds for particle saltation higher than those predicted by models derived from simulations of terrestrial-planet conditions; the results can be reconciled by modifying the models to take into account the low ratio of particle density to fluid density on Titan.
- Devon M. Burr
- , Nathan T. Bridges
- & Joshua P. Emery
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Letter |
Flow in bedrock canyons
A survey along the Fraser Canyon in Canada reveals complex flow dynamics involving velocity inversions and upwelling, which suggests ways to improve flow and bedrock incision modelling.
- Jeremy G. Venditti
- , Colin D. Rennie
- & Michael Church
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Letter |
A signature of transience in bedrock river incision rates over timescales of 104–107 years
Rates of river incision into bedrock are thought to reflect rates of rock uplift as well as the strength of climatic forcing of erosion over time, but here incision rate is shown to depend on the measurement interval.
- Noah J. Finnegan
- , Rina Schumer
- & Seth Finnegan
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Letter |
Lifespan of mountain ranges scaled by feedbacks between landsliding and erosion by rivers
Computational simulations show that variations in the rate of fluvial erosion between tectonically active and inactive mountain ranges may relate to a bidirectional coupling between bedrock river incision and landslides.
- David L. Egholm
- , Mads F. Knudsen
- & Mike Sandiford
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Letter |
Climatic control of bedrock river incision
Topographic analyses and numerical modelling of canyon formation across the Hawaiian island of Kaua‘i show that rivers erode into bedrock more efficiently where precipitation rates are higher.
- Ken L. Ferrier
- , Kimberly L. Huppert
- & J. Taylor Perron
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Letter |
Glaciations in response to climate variations preconditioned by evolving topography
Previously glaciated landscapes tend to have large areas concentrated at the same elevation; here it is shown that small climate changes can trigger massive glacial expansions for these landscapes, explaining long-term patterns of erosion in the Quaternary period.
- Vivi Kathrine Pedersen
- & David Lundbek Egholm
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Letter |
The root of branching river networks
Models and field measurements together show that the branching patterns of fine-scale river networks are the result of coupled instabilities in the erosional processes that drive valley incision.
- J. Taylor Perron
- , Paul W. Richardson
- & Mathieu Lapôtre
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Letter |
Coseismic and postseismic slip of the 2011 magnitude-9 Tohoku-Oki earthquake
- Shinzaburo Ozawa
- , Takuya Nishimura
- & Tetsuro Imakiire
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News & Views |
Ancient Antarctic fjords
The East Antarctic ice sheet, the largest in the world, lies seemingly frozen in time. Discovery of a rugged landscape buried beneath the thick ice provides evidence of a more dynamic past. See Letter p.72
- Sandra Passchier
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Letter |
A dynamic early East Antarctic Ice Sheet suggested by ice-covered fjord landscapes
- Duncan A. Young
- , Andrew P. Wright
- & Martin J. Siegert
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Letter |
Inferring nonlinear mantle rheology from the shape of the Hawaiian swell
- N. Asaadi
- , N. M. Ribe
- & F. Sobouti
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Research Highlights |
Geology: Hills emerge as glaciers retreat
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Editorial |
How continents persist
Earth scientists have explained why Canada and South Africa are still here.
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Research Highlights |
Geomorphology: Underwater dunes