For more than a century, geologists have sought to measure the distribution of erosion rates on Earth's dynamic surface. Since the mid-1980s, measurements of in situ 10 Be, a cosmogenic radionuclide, have been used to estimate outcrop and basin-scale erosion rates at 87 sites around the world. Here, we compile, normalize, and compare published 10 Be erosion rate data (n = 1599) in order to understand how, on a global scale, geologic erosion rates integrated over 10 3 to 10 6 years vary between climate zones, tectonic settings, and different rock types.Drainage basins erode more quickly (mean = 218 m Myr −1 ; median = 54 m Myr −1 ) than outcrops (mean = 12 m Myr −1 ; median = 5.4 m Myr −1 ), likely reflecting the acceleration of rock weathering rates under soil. Drainage basin and outcrop erosion rates both vary by climate zone, rock type, and tectonic setting. On the global scale, environmental parameters (latitude, elevation, relief, mean annual precipitation and temperature, seismicity, basin slope and area, and percent basin cover by vegetation) explain erosion rate

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Portable optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) readers are increasingly being used in geomorphological and archaeological investigations, but information regarding data reproducibility and the reliability of interpretations based on portable OSL reader data has not yet been presented to the wider geomorphological community. This Letter addresses these two issues by returning to Grabben Gullen Creek in the southeastern Australian Tablelands where we remeasure a sediment profile that was first measured by other researchers 3 years earlier. We also compare portable OSL reader data measured on sediment interpreted to have been deposited in swampy meadow wetlands and flood alluvium settings with data measured on known swampy meadow and flood deposits. Our data show that portable OSL reader data are reproducible. Moreover, we confirm the earlier interpretation that stratigraphies commonly exposed in southeastern Australian Tablelands valley bottoms reflect pre‐European swampy meadow wetlands and flood alluvium. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.