Palestrante: Mauricio Parra (USP)

Resumo da palestra: Thermochronometry of fluvial modern sediments has long been identified as a useful method to infer various patterns of source-area exhumation. Initial applications included the estimation either of long-term catchment-wide erosion rates in rapidly exhuming regions or, when combined with bedrock thermochronology, also of patterns of present-day denudation. A more quantitative approach has been recently developed through inverse modeling of detrital data, which, accounting for several potential uncertainties in the detrital ages, allows the documentation of either bedrock thermal histories, catchment denudation patterns, or both. The underlying rationale stems from the notion that the distribution of detrital ages in fluvial modern sediments results from the combined signals of long-term cooling, mineral fertility, and present-day denudation within the catchment. The method is best suited for mountainous regions of small area, high relief, and little lithological variation. Here, I show its applicability in such an area in northwestern South America, the Santa Marta Sierra Nevada (SMSN) of Colombia.