Chemical weathering, as well as physical erosion, changes the composition and shapes the surface of the continental crust. However, the amount of continental material that has been lost over Earth's history due to chemical weathering is poorly constrained. Using a mass balance model for lithium inputs and outputs from the continental crust, we find that the mass of continental crust that has be...

Hafnium 176Hf/177Hf isotope ratio variations in marine records are thought to reflect changes in continental weathering through time, but the behavior of Hf in rivers, and during weathering, is not well understood. Here, we present 176Hf/177Hf data for rivers, bedrock, soils, and leaching experiments for the Moselle basin, Vosges, France. These data strongly suggest that the 176Hf/177Hf composi...

-Chloritic veins in serpentinite and their weathering products were analyzed by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) and X-ray fluorescence spectrometry (XRF). Chlorite formed during the Hercynianage orogenesis had apparently been partly transformed to high-charge vermiculite during subsequent metamorphism of the rocks. The idealized structural formulae for these minerals are (mlL9Fea+0.zFe2+o.4Mg9.2...

Mitochondrial DNA analysis of skeletal material is invaluable in forensic identification, although results can vary widely among remains. Previous studies have included bones of different ages, burial conditions, and even species. In the research presented, a collection of human remains that lacked major confounders such as burial age, interment style, and gross environmental conditions, while ...

Over millions of years, the oxidation of organic carbon contained within sedimentary rocks is one of the main sources of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, yet the controls on this emission remain poorly constrained. We use rhenium to track the oxidation of rock-bound organic carbon in the mountain watersheds of New Zealand, where high rates of physical erosion expose rocks to chemical weatherin...

In situ quantification of localizedweathering processes on basalt flows inNewMexico andHawaii demonstrates that small-area factors can be more important than other more readily observable factors. Further, it demonstrates that the factorial concept of the Pope Boundary-Layer weathering model is partially solvable, that organicweathering can accentuate glassweathering (with implications for clim...

It has been proposed that increased rates of chemical weathering and the related drawdown of atmospheric CO on the 2 Ž . continents may have at least partly contributed to the low CO concentrations during the last glacial maximum LGM . 2 Variations in continental erosion could thus be one of the driving forces for the glacialrinterglacial climate cycles during Quaternary times. To test such an ...

A model for the combined long-term cycles of carbon and sulfur has been constructed which combines all the factors modifying weathering and degassing of the GEOCARB III model [Berner R.A., Kothavala Z., 2001. GEOCARB III: a revised model of atmospheric CO2 over Phanerozoic time. Am. J. Sci. 301, 182–204] for CO2 with rapid recycling and oxygen dependent carbon and sulfur isotope fractionation o...

–Carbon bound in gibbsite, collected from a residual weathering profile developed on a Paleozoic granite in the Georgia Piedmont, was examined for its C content and found to be geologically young. The study site, located at the Panola Mountain Research Watershed, has developed a granite–saprolite–soil regolith in which C-gibbsite model ages deep within the profile (C-horizon) average about 8000...

As chemical weathering of silicate rocks acts as a sink for atmospheric CO2 and as greenhouse effect gases such as CO2 have a leading role in climate regulation, much of river geochemical studies now focus on chemical and mechanical riverine erosion and on their controlling parameters. Moreover, weathering has probably had a dominating influence in the climatic evolution of the Earth, and studi...