The µDose system is an innovative analytical instrument developed for the cost- and time-efficient determination of environmental radionuclide concentrations required for the calculation of sedimentation ages in palaeo-environmental and geo-archaeological research. The results of our study suggest that accuracy and precision of µDose measurements are comparable to those of well-established methods and that the new approach shows the potential to become a standard tool in environmental dosimetry.

A novel technique for the uranium–lead dating of geologically young carbonates is described and tested. The technique expands our ability to date geological events such as fault movements and past climate records.

When using trapped-charge dating methods to determine the time of deposition of a sediment, it is of great importance to know whether the signal containing the age information has been completely erased before burial or if a residual signal is inherited. We examined the residual doses of the quartz ESR signals of young fluvial sediments from the Lower Rhine terraces with known luminescence ages. We found varying but large residuals, indicating an incomplete bleaching of the quartz ESR signals.

We develop in situ-produced terrestrial cosmogenic krypton as a new tool to date and quantify Earth surface processes, the motivation being the availability of six stable isotopes and one radioactive isotope (⁸¹Kr, half-life 229 kyr) and of an extremely weathering-resistant target mineral (zircon). We provide proof of principle that terrestrial Kr_it can be quantified and used to unravel Earth surface processes.

Levinson-Lessing Lake in northern central Siberia provides an exceptional opportunity to study the evolution of the Earth's magnetic field in the Arctic. This is the first study carried out at the lake that focus on the palaeomagnetic record. It presents the relative palaeointensity and palaeosecular variation of the upper 38 m of sediment core Co1401, spanning ~62 kyr. A comparable high-resolution record of this time does not exist in the Eurasian Arctic.

Fission tracks are damage trails from uranium fission in minerals, whose ages and thermal histories are deduced from their number and length. A mineral is etched for observing the tracks with a microscope. We show that the etching and observation conditions affect the track count and explain it in the framework of a recent etch model. We conclude that established solutions do not secure that the ages and thermal histories inferred from track counts and measurements are accurate.

Subarctic and Arctic lake sediments provide key data to understand natural climate variability and future climate change. However, they can be difficult to date accurately and of limited use without a robust chronology. We use volcanic ash deposits from the last ~4000 BP to identify anomalously old radiocarbon ages at Cascade Lake, Alaska. A provisional ~15 000-year Bayesian age model is produced for the lake, and a new location for ash from five Late Holocene eruptions is reported.

Multi-thermochronometry, in which methods such as (U-Th)/He dating of zircon and apatite and apatite fission track dating are combined, is used to reconstruct rock thermal histories. Our ability to reconstruct thermal histories and interpret the geological significance of measured ages requires modeling. Here we use forward models to explore effects of grain size and chemistry on cooling ages and closure temperatures for the (U-Th)/He decay systems in apatite and zircon.

This study presents erosion rates of the George River and seven of its tributaries in northeast Tasmania, Australia. These erosion rates are the first measures of landscape change over millennial timescales for Tasmania. We demonstrate that erosion is closely linked to a topographic rainfall gradient across George River. Our findings may be useful for efforts to restore ecological health to Georges Bay by determining a pre-disturbance level of erosion and sediment delivery to this estuary.

Cooling ages date the time at which minerals cross a certain isotherm on the way up to Earth's surface. Such ages can be measured from bedrock material and river sand. If spatial variations in bedrock ages are known in a river catchment, the spatial distribution of erosion can be inferred from the distribution of the ages measured from the river sand grains. Here we develop a new tool to help such analyses, with particular emphasis on quantifying uncertainties due to sample size.

We present a record of ice retreat from the northern Alexander Archipelago, Alaska. During the last ice age (~ 26 000–19 000 years ago), these islands were covered by the Cordilleran Ice Sheet. We tested whether islands were ice-free during the last ice age for human migrants moving from Asia to the Americas. We found that these islands became ice-free between ~ 15 100 years ago and ~ 16 000 years ago, and thus these islands were not suitable for human habitation during the last ice age.

It is of critical importance to dosimetric dating techniques that the quantity of the radiation dose is estimated accurately. Here we describe gamma spectrometry in terms of instrument, measurement procedures, and data analyses required for estimating parent nuclide activities. The description includes analytical procedures required to generate data with sufficient accuracy and precision for samples in secular equilibrium. We also outline procedures required to quantify disequilibrium.

Calcite is frequently formed during alteration processes in the basaltic, uppermost layer of juvenile oceanic crust. Weathered oceanic basalts are hard to date with conventional radiometric methods. We show in a case study from the North Pamir, Central Asia, that calcite U–Pb age data, supported by geochemistry and petrological microscopy, have potential to date sufficiently old oceanic basalts, if the time span between basalt extrusion and latest calcite precipitation (~ 25 Myr) is considered.

We used new geochemical measurements to study the expression of astronomical climate cycles recorded in the Ordovician (~ 460 million years ago) geological sections of the Crozon Peninsula (France). This type of geological archive is not often studied in this way, but as they become more important going back in time, a better understanding of their potential astronomical cycles is crucial to advance our knowledge of deep-time climate dynamics and to construct high-resolution timescales.

We use age–depth modeling systems to understand the relationship between age and depth in lake sediment cores. However, depending on which modeling system we use, the model results may vary. We provide a tool to link different modeling systems in an interactive computational environment and make their results comparable. We demonstrate the power of our tool by highlighting three case studies in which we test our application for single-sediment cores and a collection of multiple sediment cores.

Dosimetric dating methods based on the analysis of luminescence signals emitted by granular minerals extracted from sedimentary deposits now play an important role in the study of the Quaternary. Here we propose a new approach in which the age of the deposit is calculated by combining the equivalent dose and dose-rate distributions. The underlying Bayesian mathematical model and its implementation via an R code are provided, together with the results obtained for a finite set of configurations.

We explored surface exposure dating with two nuclides to date two sets of moraines from the Yukon Territory and explain the reasoning for the observed ages. Results suggest multiple processes, including preservation of nuclides from a prior exposure period, and later erosion of the moraines is required to explain the data. Our results only allow for the older moraines to date to Marine Isotope Stage 3 or 4 and the younger moraines to date to the very earliest Holocene.

The R package sandbox is a collection of functions that allow the creation, sampling and analysis of fully virtual sediment sections, like having a virtual twin of real-world deposits. This article introduces the concept, features, and workflows required to use sandbox. It shows how a real-world sediment section can be mapped into the model and subsequently addresses a series of theoretical and practical questions, exploiting the flexibility of the model framework.

Cosmogenic nuclides are now widely applied in the Earth sciences; however, more recent applications often push the analytical limits of the technique. Our study presents a comprehensive method for analysis of cosmogenic ¹⁰Be and ²⁶Al samples down to isotope concentrations of a few thousand atoms per gram of sample, which opens the door to new and more varied applications of cosmogenic nuclide analysis.

The article demonstrates a new technique that can be used to determine the age of calcite crystallisation using the decay of ¹⁷⁶Lu to ¹⁷⁶Hf. The technique is novel because (a) Lu–Hf radiometric dating is rarely applied to calcite and (b) this is the first instance where analysis has been conducted by ablating the sample with a laser beam rather than bulk dissolution. By using laser ablation the original context of the sample is preserved.

Phanerozoic sedimentary rocks of northern Canada have compositionally heterogeneous detrital apatite with high age dispersion caused by differential thermal annealing. Discrete apatite fission track kinetic populations with variable annealing temperatures are defined using elemental data but are poorly resolved using conventional parameters. Inverse thermal modelling of samples from northern Yukon reveals a record of multiple heating–cooling cycles consistent with geological constraints.

This work provides equations allowing the use of minerals with variable concentrations of parent and daughter isotopes as primary standards to correct for elemental fractionation during the analysis by laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry.

Annually banded lake sediment can track environmental change with high resolution in locations where alternatives are not available. Yet, information about chronology is often affected by poor appearance. Traditional methods struggle with these records. To overcome this obstacle we demonstrate a Bayesian approach that combines information from radiocarbon dating and laminations on cores from Columbine Lake, Colorado, expanding possibilities for producing high-resolution records globally.