Applications of in-situ Cosmogenic Nuclides in Earth Sciences

Terrestrial in situ cosmogenic nuclide (TCN) techniques can directly measure surface exposure ages and burial events but traditional ¹⁴C dating, thermoluminescence dating, luminescence dating, etc cannot. In addition, the rapid progress of measuring instrumentation accuracy and precision, especially the detection limit of Accelerated Mass Spectrometry (AMS) has greatly improved to 10⁶ atoms. Therefore, TCN dating techniques have led to a revolutionary change, prompting increasing use in the nuclide earth sciences of paleoclimatology, structural geology, tephrochronology and paleomagnetism, for example. In this paper, the principles of TCN are briefly introduced. Based on existing applications, it describes the present field of burial age, erosion rate and faultslip rate for the glacier, fault slip and terrace, etc.. Current research work and problems in several specific earth science areas including glacial geomorphology, tectonic geomorphology, geomorphologic processes and geomorphic evolution are also summarized. In addition, the problem not resolved yet is described, such as the relationship of radionuclide generation rate with time and space, uncertainty of results from geological and geomorphological conditions of sample.