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Increased sedimentation rates and grain sizes 2–4 Myr ago due to the influence of climate change on erosion rates

Nature volume 410, pages 891–897 (2001)Cite this article

Abstract

Around the globe, and in a variety of settings including active and inactive mountain belts, increases in sedimentation rates as well as in grain sizes of sediments were recorded at ∼2–4 Myr ago, implying increased erosion rates. A change in climate represents the only process that is globally synchronous and can potentially account for the widespread increase in erosion and sedimentation, but no single process—like a lowering of sea levels or expanded glaciation—can explain increases in sedimentation in all environments, encompassing continental margins and interiors, and tropical as well as higher latitudes. We suggest that climate affected erosion mainly by the transition from a period of climate stability, in which landscapes had attained equilibrium configurations, to a time of frequent and abrupt changes in temperature, precipitation and vegetation, which prevented fluvial and glacial systems from establishing equilibrium states.

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Figure 1: Plot of δ18O from benthic foraminifers since 25 Myr ago, showing increases in mean values and in variability since ∼4 Myr ago.
Figure 2: Map of the Earth showing selected areas where sedimentation rates have increased substantially since 2–4 Myr ago. (Details are given in Fig. 4 and Supplementary Information.) For each area, a small histogram is shown.
Figure 3: Histogram of terrigenous sediment deposited in the world's oceans, compiled by Hay et al.6.
Figure 4: Examples of variations in sedimentation rates, showing an abrupt increase since ∼5 Myr ago in different settings.

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Acknowledgements

This work was stimulated by a lecture by T.-L. Liu in 1992; in 1998, S. Thompson pointed out that a steady-state geomorphic regime would not be established in an environment undergoing large, rapid climate changes. We thank T. Bickert and W. B. Curry for the unpublished data shown in Fig. 1, W. B. Curry for assembling these data for us, Z.-L. Ding for guidance with the Quaternary climate history of China, C. Duncan for help with figures, and J. R. Curray and B. Hallet for constructive criticisms. P.-Z. Zhang is supported by the National Science Foundation of China.

Author information

Author notes

  1. Peter Molnar

    Present address: Bilby Research Center, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, 86011-6013, Arizona, USA

  2. William R. Downs

    Present address: Department of Geological Sciences, Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Science, Campus Box 399, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado, 80309, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Geology, State Seismology Bureau, Beijing, China

    Zhang Peizhen

  2. Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, 02139, Massachusetts, USA

    Peter Molnar

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  1. Zhang Peizhen
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Correspondence to Peter Molnar.

Supplementary information

This Supplemental Material consists of two parts. First, a Table lists published examples of deductions that particular mountain ranges rose in Plio-Quaternary time, with brief quotes of illustrating the level of confidence and quantitative measures of uplift where given. With this table is a map showing the locations of the belts for which quotes are given. Second, Figures showing sediment accumulation in different regions of the world are shown.

Figure A1

Topographic map of world showing locations of regions where mountain ranges allegedly rose in Plio-Quaternary time, with names and references keyed to the attached table.

1. Examples of reported late Pliocene-Quaternary uplift

  • Alaska [Taber, 1943, p. 1530]: "The uplifts, which ended the cycle of peneplanation and initiated the period of valley erosion followed by deposition of the gravels and silts, probably began near the close of the Tertiary ..."

  • Sawtooth Range, Montana [Deiss, 1943, p. 1163[: "Late in the Pliocene or possibly early Pleistocene ... the entire area of the northern Rocky Mountains was elevated bodily, perhaps several thousand feet."

  • Wind River region, Wyoming [Keefer, 1970, p. D1]: "Near the close of the Tertiary, the entire region, mountains and basin alike, was elevated about 5,000 feet above its previous level, and the present cycle of erosion was initiated."

  • Granite Mountains area, Wyoming [Love, 1970, p. C2]: "Regional uplift during late Pliocene and early Pleistocene time started the present cycle of degradation." [p. C123] "During late Pliocene time, epeirogenic uplift raised the general land surface of Wyoming several thousand feet."

  • Laramie Basin, southeastern Wyoming [Blackstone, 1975, p. 250]: "The profound denudation of the region that has taken place since the deposition of the Pliocene rocks would seem to require regional elevation to provide in part the erosive power of the streams that denuded the region."

  • Northern Colorado [Izett, 1975, p. 184.]: Pliocene rocks (5 to 2 m.y. old) are seemingly rare in northern Colorado, and Pliocene time ... was seemingly a time of uplift and erosion."

  • Front Range, Colorado [Wahlstrom, 1947, p. 551]: "Uplifts initiated in late Pliocene of early Pleistocene accelerated erosional processes which resulted in deep dissection of the uplifted surface during later Pleistocene to produce the modern canyons and valleys."

  • Southern Rocky Mountains [Tweto, 1975, p. 4]: "Most of the altitude and relief ... resulted from post-Laramide uplift and differential erosion in late Tertiary time."

  • Southern Appalachians [Potter, 1955, p. 128]: "Pliocene epeirogenic uplift caused accelerated erosion and sedimentation to produce aggradation along the major drainage ways ..."

  • Colombian Andes [Kolla et al., 1984, p. 316]: "the main phase of uplift of the Andes in the Pliocene."

  • Bolivian Andes [Walker, 1947]: "A combination of physiographic and paleontologic evidence leads to the conclusion that the uplift of the Andes began in Late Pliocene and went on actively during the Pleistocene."

  • Bolivian Andes [Benjamin et al., 1987, p. 682]: "...uplift rates have been increasing exponentially for the past 40 m.y."

  • Brazil [King, 1967, p. 326]: "The effects of Plio-Pleistocene [regional uplift] are not less pronounced in South America than in Africa."

  • Alps [Trümpy, 1960, p. 898]: "From late Oligocene to middle Miocene, the Alps formed a chain of high mountains, but they were not more than a hilly tract of country by the beginning of the Pliocene. The present morphology, especially of the western Alps, is the product of Pleistocene uplift and erosion."

  • Carpathian, Caucasus, and Kopet Dagh [Velikovskaya, 1969]: "The characteristic feature of mountain peaks in the Alpine zone of the Soviet Union is level plateaus, partially dissected to very rugged topography. These plateaus are relics of an ancient plain uplifted to varying heights.... The study of the Miocene and Pliocene history of the alpine zone proves, however, that the initial plain is still younger, that is, late Pliocene."

  • Spanish Meseta [King, 1967, pp. 391-392]: "The violence of the late-Cainozoic uplift is attested by the present elevation of the meseta (1,100-1,500 metres), by the deep youthful valleys by which the major rivers dissect it, by the abundance of Quaternary conglomerates and by the abrupt descent to the coast."

  • Pyren쎩es, High Atlas, and Anti-Atlas [de Sitter, 1952, p. 297]: "But Pliocene uplifts of virtually equal magnitude have taken place not only in the Alps, which were tremendously compressed from the Cretaceous to the Miocene, but also in the Pyrenees, strongly compressed but mainly without nappes in the Cretaceous and Eocene, the High Atlas, moderately compressed in the Eocene and Miocene, and the Anti-Atlas, not compressed since the Precambrian."

  • Northern Eurasia [Strelkov, 1969, p. 84]: "Beginning with the Pliocene or, in some regions, with the Oligocene, the relief was considerably renewed as mountains and platforms were uplifted." [p. 85] "All mountain systems experienced uplift with amplitudes of 2,000-4,000 m."

  • Northwestern Tibet [Zheng et al., 2000, p. 715]: "We interpret the change in depositional facies and increase in sedimentation as indicating that the main uplift of the northwestern Tibetan Plateau began ca. 4.5 Ma."

  • Tibetan Plateau [Xu Ren, 1981, p. 143] "In middle Pleistocene... [the Tibetan] plateau was 3,000-3,500 m in elevation.... During Holocene, the plateau upheaved to 4,500-5,500 m in elevation."

  • Nanga Parbat [Zeitler, 1985, p. 147]: "The Nanga Parbat-Haramosh Massif and Hunza are striking loci of very young cooling ages, which reflect the rapid and accelerating uplift and erosion of these regions over the past 10 Ma."

  • Himalaya [Gansser, 1981, 119] "Following the deposition of the Siwalik molasse we note the last major orogeny during the Middle Pleistocene. Still younger is the remarkable morphogenic phase, still active today."

  • Southern Africa [King, 1967, p. 246]: "Towards the end of the Pliocene the monotonous Cainozoic landscape was subjected to powerful uplift and warping, the action of which is possibly not exhausted even at the present day. The [African] continental interior was elevated as a plateau, generally to about 4,000 feet..." (On page 297, he states that of part of this area was "re-elevated at the close of the Cainozoic era by 4,000-5,000 feet...")

  • East Africa [Saggerson and Baker, 1965, p. 64]: "The end-Tertiary surface now stands at elevations approaching 4000 ft, but declines steadily eastwards to pass beneath Plio-Pleistocene sediments of the lower Tana Basin. The minimal uplift of 3500 ft in the rift-zone..."

  • East Africa [Baker et al., 1972, p. 9]: "Major uplift of the Kenyan dome occurred near the end of the Tertiary and was of the order of 1,500 m in central Kenya..."

  • Southeastern Australia [King, 1967, p. 356]: "Upon the Australian mainland, the late-Pliocene and Pleistocene 'Kosciusko' movements did not involve any significant folding or crumpling of rock masses [but] ... is recognised ... by strong warping, arching and tilting that involved all of the Cainozoic landsurfaces, carrying them from near sea level at the coast to maxima of 4,000 and 5,000 feet upon the Great Divide ..."

  • Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica [Behrendt and Cooper, 1991]: "... our estimated limits for the start of the latest episode of uplift (2-5 Ma) approximately coincides with the start of the cold period at 2.5 Ma ..."

  • General [Gansser, 1982, p. 221]: "The morphology of a high mountain which we admire is the result of recent vertical uplift, the morphogenic phase... Examples from the Alpine, Andean, and Himalayan events are discussed."

  • General [King, 1967, p. 426]: "Allowing for local variations, the basic pattern of cyclic landscapes is demonstrably the same in all quarters of the globe and argues a global control of tectonics which operates to regulate landscape by governing base levels."

References to Table 1

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  • Benjamin, M. T., Johnson, N. M. & Naeser, C. W. Recent rapid uplift in the Bolivian Andes: Evidence from fission-track dating. Geology 15, 680-683 (1987).

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2. Figures showing sediment accumulation in different regions of the world

The following plots showing examples of sedimentation rates vs. time during the Cenozoic Era, from off-shore and onshore basins and from tectonically inactive, mildly active, and quite active regions.

Figure A2(a)

Accumulation rates per unit area, without corrections for compaction, in the Williston Basin of North Dakota16 [Gerhard et al., 1982].

Figure A2(b)

Mass accumulation rates per unit area, corrected for compaction, for five drill holes from the axial part of North Sea8 [Sclater and Christie, 1980].

Figure A2(c)

Maximum and minimum deposition rates (shown by different hatching), not corrected for compaction, for the Qiongdongnan Basin, southwest of Hainan Island in the northwestern South China Sea10 [Zhang & Kou, 1989].

Figure A2(d)

Maximum and minimum deposition rates (shown by different hatching), not corrected for compaction, for the Yinggehai Basin southwest of Hainan Island in the northwestern South China Sea10 [Zhang & Kou, 1989].

Figure A2(e)

Maximum and minimum values of volumes of solid mass in the Northwestern Sumatra Basin and the Mergui Basin to its north9 [M쎩tivier et al., 1999].

Figure A2(f)

Accumulation rates per unit area, without corrections for compaction, in the Scotian Basin off the coast of Nova Scotia11 [Poag, 1982].

Figure A2(g)

Volume accumulation rates, not corrected for compaction, in Po Basin39 [Pieri & Mattavelli, 1986].

Figure A2(h)

Volume accumulation rates, not corrected for compaction, in Northern Apennine Foredeep40 [Ricci Lucchi, 1986]. Darkly hatched section shows typical rates, and the lighter hatching shows the maximum for the Po Basin.

Figure A2(i)

Volume accumulation rates, not corrected for compaction, in the Apennine Foredeep, Adriatic Sea38 [Ori et al., 1986].

Figure A2(j)

Sedimentary accumulation rates along the northern and northeastern margin of the Tibetan Plateau, not corrected for compaction. Quaternary sediment consists of dark gray massive conglomerate near the mountains and progressively becomes cobble and pebbly layers inside the adjacent basins. The underlying sediments are fine grained, reddish and orange colored sandstone, siltstone and mudstone. Locations of the column are shown in Figure 2. Data were compiled by one of us (Zh. P.) from (refs. 20,21) Regional Stratigraphic Tables of China [1980] and Regional Geology of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region [1993].

Figure A2(k)

Sedimentary accumulation rates along both margins of Tien Shan in China, not corrected for compaction. Quaternary sediment consists of dark gray massive conglomerate near the mountains and progressively becomes cobble and pebbly layers inside the adjacent basins. The underlying sediment is fine grained, reddish and orange colored sandstone, siltstone and mudstone. Data were compiled by one of us (Zh. P.) from (ref. 21) Regional Geology of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region [1993].

Figure A2(l)

Sedimentary accumulation rates from the Chu Basin on the northern margin of Tien Shan in Kyrgyzstan28 [Bullen et al., 2000], not corrected for compaction. Quaternary sediment consists of dark gray massive conglomerate near the mountains and progressively becomes cobble and pebbly layers inside the adjacent basins. The underlying sediment is fine grained, reddish and orange colored sandstone, siltstone and mudstone.

Figure A2(m)

Sedimentary accumulation rate from the Depression of Great Lakes near the Mongolian Altay, in Mongolia, not corrected for compaction29 [Devyatkin, 1981]. Like that from the Valley of Lakes, which lies along the northern margin of the Gobi-Altay in Mongolia, Quaternary sediment consists of dark gray massive conglomerate near the mountains and progressively becomes cobble and pebbly layers inside the adjacent basins. The underlying sediment is fine grained, reddish and orange colored sandstone, siltstone and mudstone.

References for Figure A2.

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Peizhen, Z., Molnar, P. & Downs, W. Increased sedimentation rates and grain sizes 2–4 Myr ago due to the influence of climate change on erosion rates. Nature 410, 891–897 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1038/35073504

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