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Fission-Track Thermochronology and its Application to Geology pp 269–277Cite as

Exhumation Studies of Mountain Belts Based on Detrital Fission-Track Analysis on Sand and Sandstones

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Abstract

Fission-track (FT) analysis of detrital apatite and zircon from modern sediments and ancient sandstone is a commonly used approach for studying and quantifying the long-term exhumation history of convergent mountain belts. Being aware of potential bias in the age spectra because of sampling, sample preparation and statistical data treatment such as peak-fitting, FT ages from sediments and sedimentary rocks of known depositional age can be readily transferred into long-term average exhumation or erosion rates using the lag-time concept. Double dating of single grains with the FT and U–Pb methods provides additional valuable provenance information, for example, for identifying volcanically derived grains, which may obscure the exhumation signal. Applying both apatite and zircon FT dating on the same samples allows combining the study of source area exhumation and the thermal evolution of sedimentary basins.

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Acknowledgements

This chapter benefited from reviews by Andy Carter and Eva Enkelmann and editorial handling by Marco G. Malusà and Paul G. Fitzgerald.

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  1. Institut des Sciences de la Terre, CNRS, Université Grenoble Alpes, Grenoble, France

    Matthias Bernet

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  1. Matthias Bernet
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Correspondence to Matthias Bernet .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Milano-Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Marco G. Malusà

  2. Department of Earth Sciences, Syracuse University, Syracuse, New York, USA

    Paul G. Fitzgerald

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Bernet, M. (2019). Exhumation Studies of Mountain Belts Based on Detrital Fission-Track Analysis on Sand and Sandstones. In: Malusà, M., Fitzgerald, P. (eds) Fission-Track Thermochronology and its Application to Geology. Springer Textbooks in Earth Sciences, Geography and Environment. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89421-8_15

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