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Denudation of the Continents

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Abstract

ESTIMATES of denudation often enter into geologic argument and have to be extrapolated backwards over geological intervals of time. The importance of human activity in the present-day erosional cycle has been pointed out by Douglas1 and has been carefully evaluated by Judson2 in a comparison of world-wide river load estimates with data from the nearly undisturbed Congo and Amazon basins. Judson concludes that man's intervention has increased the overall denudation rate from 9 to 24 billion tons a year: far more than enough to discredit the present rate as a geologic parameter. In this communication I attempt to verify Judson's pre-human estimate and to defend its general applicability to the past 300 million years.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geology, West Georgia College, Carrollton, Georgia, 30117

    B. GREGOR

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  1. B. GREGOR
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GREGOR, B. Denudation of the Continents. Nature 228, 273–275 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1038/228273a0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/228273a0

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