Geochronology and Chemostratigraphy of Quaternary Environment

Dear Colleagues,

When defining the chronological frameworks for changes found in various environmental (such as chemical composition, pollen assemblage, macrofossils, etc.) archives derived along sedimentary profiles and linking them to well- (or less well-) known events from history of the environment and of humans, numerical age estimation is essential.

There are principally two different approaches applied for quaternary archives to obtain numerical ages. Incremental (or sometimes called sidereal) methods, such as dendrochronology, sclerochronology, and varve dating, rely on counting of annual/seasonal deposition units. Radiometric techniques are based on either the counting of the members of a radioactive decay chain or quantifying the effects of environmental radiation on a sample exposed to radiation. Sedimentary deposits are among the most valuable sources of paleoenvironmental information. Assuming that radiometric techniques are used to assign ages to certain levels (reference horizons) along a sedimentary profile, an additional necessary step is to develop a model to assign an estimated age to the levels in between the reference horizons, or even out of their range, if needed.

Advancements in dating techniques allow for setting up higher resolution chronologies than ever. Meanwhile, due to instrumental developments, the circle of geochemical proxy information that can be applied in some way to grab paleoenvironmental changes has greatly expanded too, opening new horizons in the reconstruction of the past.

This Special Issue invites contributions, without restriction, regarding geographical regions and that analyze methodological problems or present case studies of the application of quaternary dating techniques or geochemical analyses on any types of environmental archives. Research synthesizing results obtained using multiple quaternary dating methods and geochemical analyses are particularly welcome. The volume also invites studies dealing with age-depth modeling and high-resolution sampling.

Dr. Zoltán Kern
Dr. György Sipos
Guest Editors

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• numerical ages
• radiometric methods
• radiogenic methods
• annual increments
• age-depth modeling

Title: Absolute dating of fault gouge materials using Isothermal Thermoluminescence: an example from the Nojima Fault Zone - SW Japan
Authors: Evangelos Tsakalos; Eleni Filippaki; Aiming Lin; Maria Kazantzaki; Takafumi Nishiwaki; Yannis Bassiakos
Affiliation: Laboratory of Luminescence dating, Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, National Centre for Scientific Research, N.C.S.R. “Demokritos”, Aghia Paraskevi, Athens 153 10, Greece
Abstract: Establishing the absolute age of palaeoearthquakes is of great significance for the assessment of the seismicity and seismic hazards of a region. As such, several different geochronological techniques to date earthquake-related materials have been developed, to provide answers on the time of past earthquakes. The present study is part of a wider palaeoseismic research project conducted in the Nojima Fault Zone (NFZ), which triggered the 1995 Mw 6.9 Kobe (Japan) earthquake, for assessing the suitability of the Isothermal-Thermoluminescence (ITL) dating technique on fine-grained quartz and medium-grained feldspar and providing a sequence of ages of fault-rock samples, separated from a drilled core which was retrieved from ~506 m in depth. Our analysis reveals that ITL can produce consistent dating results and could be considered a reliable luminescence technique for the absolute dating of fault gouge material. The produced ITL ages signified the existence of repeated seismic events within the NFZ that took place through the late Pleistocene, with gouge ages spanning from 78.6 ± 4.2 to 13.4 ± 1.4 ka however, overestimation of the produced ITL dating results may be apparent. Nonetheless, even though some degree of overestimation is considered, ITL dating results denote the oldest possible age boundary of formation (or luminescence signal resetting) of the collected fault gouge layers.