Cosmogenic nuclides like ¹⁰Be are rare isotopes created in rocks exposed at the Earth’s surface and can be used to understand glacier histories and landscape evolution. ¹⁰Be is usually measured in the mineral quartz. Here, we show that ¹⁰Be can be reliably measured in the mineral pyroxene. We use the measurements to determine exposure ages and understand landscape processes in rocks from Antarctica that do not have quartz, expanding the use of this method to new rock types.

The U–Th–He method is a technique to determine the cooling history of minerals. Traditional approaches to U–Th–He dating are time-consuming and require handling strong acids and radioactive solutions. This paper presents an alternative approach in which samples are irradiated with protons and subsequently analysed by laser ablation mass spectrometry. Unlike previous in situ U–Th–He dating attempts, the new method does not require any absolute concentration measurements of U, Th, or He.

Radiocarbon dating is a widely used tool to establish chronologies for sediment records. We show that modern aquatic plants in the Laguna del Peinado lake system (Altiplano–Puna Plateau) give overestimated ages due to reservoir effects from the input of old groundwater and volcanic CO₂. Our results reveal a spatial variability in the modern reservoir effect within the lake basin, which has implications for radiocarbon-based chronologies in paleoclimate studies in this (and similar) regions.

The marine reservoir age (MRA) is the difference between the ¹⁴C age of the ocean and that of the atmosphere at a given time. In geochronology, knowing the local MRA is important to derive accurate calibrated ages for ¹⁴C-dated marine material. However, MRA values for coastal West Africa are scarce. From the ¹⁴C dating of known-age bivalves from museum collections, we calculated MRA values and populated the MRA dataset for coastal West Africa over a latitudinal transect from 33°N to 15°S.

We describe a new, fully automated extraction system for in situ ¹⁴C at PRIME Lab that incorporates more reliable components and designs than our original systems. We use a LiBO₂ flux to dissolve a quartz sample in oxygen after removing contaminant ¹⁴C with a lower-temperature combustion step. Experiments with new Pt/Rh sample boats demonstrated reduced procedural blanks, and analyses of well-characterized intercomparison materials tested the effects of process variables on ¹⁴C yields.

This study presents the results of an outdoor flume experiment to evaluate the effect of turbidity on the bleaching of fluvially transported sediment. Our main conclusions are that even small amounts of sediment lead to a substantial change in the intensity and frequency distribution of light within the suspension and that flow turbulence is an important prerequisite for bleaching grains during transport.