Titelangaben
Schmidt, Christoph ; Zöller, Ludwig ; Hambach, Ulrich:
Dating of sediments and soils.
In: Lucke, Bernhard ; Bäumler, Rupert ; Schmidt, Michael
(Hrsg.):
Soils and Sediments as Archives of Environmental Change. -
Erlangen
,
2015
. - S. 119-146
. - (Erlanger geographische Arbeiten : Sonderband
; 42
)
ISBN 978-3-941665-04-0
Abstract
In geosciences, sediments and soils have gained outstanding importance as archives of environmental change and human activities. For temporal assignment and thus establishing a chronology of past naturedriven and man-made processes and their interactions responsible for landscape changes, secure and chronometric dating of sediment deposition and soil formation periods is indispensable. First, this contribution addresses some fundamental questions with respect to the type of events and processes that can be dated and how they are related to the scientific problem. This discussion clarifies the type of age information obtained from dating sediments and soils, and aids in assessing its significance. Second, we give an overview of physical, palaeobiological and cultural-based dating techniques that are of relevance for soil dating. Specifically, the physical dating methods comprise cosmogenic nuclides (C-14, Be-10 and others), techniques based on radiation damage (luminescence, electron spin resonance), particle tracks (fission track) and radioactive disequilibria, as well as radiogenic noble gases, magnetic dating and astrochronology.