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Pace of landscape evolution in the Sierra Nevada, California, revealed by cosmogenic dating of cave sediments

¹ Department of Earth Sciences, University of California Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, California 95064, USA
² Center for Accelerator Mass Spectrometry and Geosciences and Environmental Technology, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California 94550, USA

We report ²⁶Al/¹⁰Be based ages of Sierra Nevada caves that constrain detailed late Pliocene and Quaternary river incision histories for five river canyons. Rapid incision of 0.2 mm/yr from 2.7 to ca. 1.5 Ma slowed markedly to 0.03 mm/yr thereafter, likely reflecting the combined effects of a transient erosional response to Pliocene rock uplift and periodic mantling of riverbeds with glacially derived sediment in the late Quaternary. While 400 m of incision has occurred in the past 2.7 m.y., outpacing interfluve erosion and thereby increasing the local relief, canyons as deep as 1.6 km existed prior to that time. These new erosion rates strengthen the case for tectonically driven late Cenozoic uplift.

Key Words: caves • cosmogenic dating • bedrock incision • landscape evolution • Sierra Nevada

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