Luminescence chronology of late Holocene extreme hydrological events in the upper Penner River basin, South India

Abstract

Field stratigraphy, sedimentology and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating have been used to reconstruct the southwest monsoon variability in the semi-arid region of southern India during the late Holocene. Facies architecture and OSL dating of the water-lain sediment suggest prevalence of a weak hydrological regime around 3 ka. Following this, a progressive strengthening of monsoon occurred till 2 ka. After 2 ka and until 1 ka fluvial activity was nearly dormant, indicating weakening of the monsoon. Presence of high-magnitude flood deposits, overbank sedimentation and pedogenesis during 1-0.6 ka indicate intensification of the southwest monsoon in the basin. The onset of aridity was associated with episodic storm surge events that are manifested in the pond sedimentation and localised aeolian accretion. This phase is bracketed between 0.5 ka and 0.2 ka. A renewed phase of monsoonal activity was observed in the form of floodplain aggradation between 180 and 90 years ago. In the past 70 years no significant change in the monsoon performance has been observed.

Mid-Holocene sedimentation and landscape evolution in the western Great Rann of Kachchh, India

“…Clay mineralogy data obtained on the Rann sediment near Shakti Bet shows consistently high values of illite followed by chlorite, suggesting the Indus River/Himalaya source. onset of regional aridity (climatically induced) in western, central and southern India (Kale, 1999;Thomas et al, 2007;Roy et al, 2008), or abrupt due to the land-level change caused by an earthquake. At this stage, due to limited data, it is difficult to ascertain the relative contribution of either of the two factors in the withdrawal of subtidal environment from the western Great Rann.…”

9.31 Dryland Fluvial Environments: Assessing Distinctiveness and Diversity from a Global Perspective

“…Over the past decade, these types of dryland fluvial studies have been enhanced significantly by technical and methodological developments in geochronology, particularly cosmogenic isotope analysis (CIA) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. OSL dating has been used to establish Quaternary river dynamics in many drylands, particularly Australia (e.g., Kemp and Spooner, 2007;Maroulis et al, 2007;Page et al, 2009), India (e.g., Srivastava et al, 2003aSrivastava et al, , 2003bJain and Tandon, 2003;Jain et al, 2005;Gibling et al, 2005;Juyal et al, 2006;Thomas et al, 2007;Chandra et al, 2007), Namibia (e.g., Bourke et al, 2003;Srivastava et al, 2004Srivastava et al, , 2005Srivastava et al, , 2006Eitel et al, 2005Eitel et al, , 2006Brook et al, 2006), and the Mediterranean Basin and Middle East (e.g. OSL dating has been used to establish Quaternary river dynamics in many drylands, particularly Australia (e.g., Kemp and Spooner, 2007;Maroulis et al, 2007;Page et al, 2009), India (e.g., Srivastava et al, 2003aSrivastava et al, , 2003bJain and Tandon, 2003;Jain et al, 2005;Gibling et al, 2005;Juyal et al, 2006;Thomas et al, 2007;Chandra et al, 2007), Namibia (e.g., Bourke et al, 2003;Srivastava et al, 2004Srivastava et al, , 2005Srivastava et al, , 2006Eitel et al, 2005Eitel et al, , 2006…”

Late Pleistocene and Holocene extreme hydrological event records from slackwater flood deposits of theAnkang east reach in the upperHanjiangRiver valley,China

“…However, because of instrument errors and other intrinsic sources of variability, well‐bleached natural samples should show greater variability (Thomas et al . ; Galbraith & Roberts ). Therefore, we chose a dispersion threshold (σ b ) of 11% for all samples, which was greater than the measured values.…”