The impact of climate on continental denudation is most pronounced in high mountain ranges, which generate a disproportionally large amount of sediment for their area. However, there are currently limited tools to accurately reconstruct past denudation. We present a record of basin-scale paleo-denudation rates since the last glacial period in the low-latitude, rapidly eroding Taiwan orogen. We measured 10Be(meteoric)/9Be ratios in dated coastal sediments and converted them into paleo-denudation rates. Our results reveal large variations in denudation rates (0.1−3.0 mm/yr). These variations do not mirror large-scale climate trends recorded by marine benthic δ18O. Instead, denudation rates are primarily influenced by the intensity of the East Asian monsoon. This observation is complementary to previous paleo-10Be studies in mid-latitude regions, where basin-scale denudation is mainly driven by glacial or periglacial processes. Climatic cycles appear to exert a primary control over denudation, where the relative importance of specific climatic factors likely varies across latitudinal zones.
Deng et al. (Thu,) studied this question.