Comparison of field and laboratory weathering rates in carbonate rocks from an Eastern Mediterranean drainage basin
- Creators
- Levenson, Yael
- Ryb, Uri
- Emmanuel, Simon
Abstract
The rates of carbonate rock weathering affect the global carbon cycle over timescales of hundreds to thousands of years. While field measurements show that the rate of carbonate denudation increases with rainfall, significant variability exists. To determine whether the mineralogical composition of the rocks causes this variability, we compare published long-term field denudation rates determined from cosmogenic isotopes (^(36)Cl) with the weathering rates measured in laboratory experiments conducted on the same rock samples. The samples were collected from natural-rock outcrops across the Soreq drainage basin (Israel) that experience similar mean annual precipitation, but exhibit long-term denudation rates that vary from 6 mm ky^(−1) to 20 mm ky^(−1). In laboratory experiments, we found that the laboratory rates also varied, decreasing as the ratio of dolomite to calcite increased. However, no correlation was evident between the long-term denudation rates and mineral composition, suggesting that the variability in field rates was not controlled by the kinetics of dissolution. Other factors, such as rain intensity, biological activity, and mechanical erosion are likely to control the variability in the rates by inhibiting or accelerating the weathering of carbonate surfaces in natural settings.
Additional Information
© 2017 Elsevier B.V. Received 10 November 2016; Received in revised form 15 February 2017; Accepted 17 February 2017. Sari Roded, Yevgeny Kreisserman and Ran Goldberg are thanked for their technical help, and Ofir Tirosh is thanked for his assistance with the analytical work. We thank Shasta Marrero for her detailed review of the manuscript and for help with the recalculation of the denudation rates. We also thank the editor Derek Vance and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. The Israel Science Foundation and the CAMBR fellowship are thanked for their financial support during this study.Attached Files
Supplemental Material - mmc1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 75350
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.epsl.2017.02.031
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20170323-101146715
- Israel Science Foundation
- CAMBR Fellowship
- Created
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2017-03-23Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-15Created from EPrint's last_modified field