GFZ German research centre for geo sciences

Section 3.3: Earth Surface Geochemistry

Current Projects

PALAVAS will track weathering and erosion rates of basalt rocks through time based on isotope-geochemical and cosmogenic nuclide-analyses of soils, rivers, and detrital sedimentary archives, and thus will deliver updated view of how weathering and erosion evolve on volcanic tropical islands, and how this evolution impacts global CO2 consumption.

Using numerical modelling, we simulate the ice cover during the last glacial cycle and the resulting isostatic adjustment of the Alpine lithosphere.

We combine cosmogenic nuclides with a variety of field and lab based approaches to investigate the effects of climate, biota, fracturing, and lithology on hillslope denudation rates, fluvial incision and landscape evolution in the Coastal Cordillera of Chile.

We combine field observations, cosmogenic nuclides, remote sensing and numerical modelling to quantify erosion rates of steep rock walls in glacial landscapes and assess the sensitivity of these landscapes to climatic changes.

The aim of the Devendra project is to develop the meteoric ¹⁰Be/⁹Be proxy to quantify the weathering of basalt and carbonate rocks and to decipher their impact on the Earth's vegetation and climate system:

The ratio of the boron isotopes ¹¹B and ¹⁰B in seawater is a critical value for determining the CO₂ concentration in the past. We are developing a new model, based on new knowledge about the boron cycle, to reconstruct the 11B/10B value of seawater over the last 100 million years.

Past Projects

Within the framework of "DeepEarthShape", projects from the fields of geochemistry, microbiology, geophysics, geology, and biogeochemistry are involved in investigating the weathering zone in the subsurface of the Earth.

We study land-to-ocean pathways of 9Be and the distribution of 10Be/9Be ratio at the land-ocean interface with the aim to better understand the marine geobiochemical cycle of beryllium and to investigate the potential applications of Beryllium isotopes in different oceanic environments.

We use experimental approaches to determine the isotope fractionation during the uptake and translocation of silicon, iron and magnesium. For this purpose, the organisms are cultivated in controlled laboratory experiments and the stable isotope ratios in the growth solutions as well as in the plant parts and fungi are determined.

We use field observations, cosmogenic nuclides, topographic analysis, and stream power modelling to assess the influence of biota on discharge variability and river incision across a pronounced north-south climate and vegetation gradient in the Chilean coastal Cordillera.

In EarthShape BioSoils we will explore the links between denudation - the removal of mass due to chemical and physical weathering and erosion - and soil production - supply of regolith mass from rock or dust - via biogenic weathering.

Dr. Richard Ott is quantifying changes in erosion rates on different time-scales from river sediments by measuring cosmogenic radionuclides.

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