| Title | Luminescence dating of aeolian sand from the Northern Great Plains, Canada - the utility of feldspar and quartz for providing temporal control on postglacial environmental change |
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| Author | Lian, O; Cullen, J; Wolfe, S |
| Source | 2010 p. 147  Open Access |
| Links | Online - En ligne
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| Year | 2010 |
| Alt Series | Earth Sciences Sector, Contribution Series 20090465 |
| Meeting | Prairie Summit CAG-CGRG Annual Meeting; Regina, SK; CA; June 1-5, 2010 |
| Document | book |
| Lang. | English |
| Media | on-line; digital |
| File format | html |
| Province | Alberta; Manitoba; Saskatchewan |
| Area | Great Plains |
| Subjects | sedimentology; geochronology; Nature and Environment; eolian deposits; dunes; sands; quartz |
| Program | Climate Change Geoscience |
| Released | 2010 01 01 |
| Abstract | Over the past 15 years more than 100 luminescence ages have been calculated from feldspar and quartz grains extracted from sand dunes on the Northern Great Plains, Canada. The vast majority of these
ages have come from feldspar, and they range from a few decades to more than 15,000 years. Feldspar ages have traditionally been calculated using multiple-aliquot techniques where it is assumed that all of the grains sampled have been exposed to
sufficient sunlight prior to burial. Although these techniques are, in most cases, well-suited to the aeolian depositional environments of interest, the luminescence signal from feldspar suffers from anomalous fading, and this requires that
relatively complex laboratory measurements be made in order to correct for its effect. Quartz, on the other hand, would appear to be a more suitable as the luminescence signal from it resets much more quickly than that from feldspar, and it does not
suffer from anomalous fading. Moreover, the latest single-aliquot regenerative (SAR) protocols can be applied to quartz, whereas they are not generally applicable to feldspar. The SAR technique is simple and less laborious, and it easily allows for
the discrimination of age populations in a sample. Despite the favourable characteristics of quartz we have found instances where it, and standard SAR protocols, appear to be unsuitable. In this paper we illustrate the utility of using quartz and
feldspar to dating sand dune evolution on the Great Northern Plains, and we provide recommendations for estimating the fidelity of luminescence ages from this region. |
| GEOSCAN ID | 262717 |
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