21.10.2014: Friedhelm von Blanckenburg, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, and Jane Willenbring, University of Pennsylvania, are the guest editors of the latest edition of the geochemical magazine „Elements“ (no. 10 Issue 5). Together with renowned co-authors they show how cosmogenic nuclides help us to understand erosion, soil formation, earthquake frequency, deposition of sediment by glaciers, and other processes of the Earth's surface.

The method of cosmogenic nuclides has developed rapidly in the last decade to a core method in the field of the processes of the Earth's surface. We owe this method to theoretical developments in particle physics that are now routinely used to understand the landscape of our planet. With incredible precision: it takes only a few thousand atoms in a few grams of a geological sample to measure these very rare isotopes that occur as a result of cosmic radiation.

Current research at GFZ employs this method to determine the rates of soil formation, the erosion of the land surface, a budget of sediment transport trough the Amazon basin, and reconstructing how global erosion has varied as with natural climate change in the Quaternary geologic past.