@article{EmbersonGalyHovius2018,
  author    = {Emberson, Robert and Galy, Albert and Hovius, Niels},
  title     = {Weathering of Reactive Mineral Phases in Landslides Acts as a Source of Carbon Dioxide in Mountain Belts},
  series = {Journal of geophysical research : Earth surface},
  volume    = {123},
  journal   = {Journal of geophysical research : Earth surface},
  number    = {10},
  publisher = {American Geophysical Union},
  address   = {Washington},
  issn      = {2169-9003},
  doi       = {10.1029/2018JF004672},
  pages     = {2695 -- 2713},
  year      = {2018},
  abstract  = {Bedrock landsliding in mountain belts can elevate overall chemical weathering rates through rapid dissolution of exhumed reactive mineral phases in transiently stored deposits. This link between a key process of erosion and the resultant weathering affects the sequestering of carbon dioxide through weathering of silicate minerals and broader links between erosion in active orogens and climate change. Here we address the effect on the carbon cycle of weathering induced by bedrock landsliding in Taiwan and the Western Southern Alps of New Zealand. Using solute chemistry data from samples of seepage from landslide deposits and river discharge from catchments with variable proportions of landsliding, we model the proportion of silicate and carbonate weathering and the balance of sulfuric and carbonic acids that act as weathering agents. We correct for secondary precipitation, geothermal, and cyclic input, to find a closer approximation of the weathering explicitly occurring within landslide deposits. We find highly variable proportions of sulfuric and carbonic acids driving weathering in landslides and stable hillslopes. Despite this variability, the predominance of rapid carbonate weathering within landslides and catchments where mass wasting is prevalent results at best in limited sequestration of carbon dioxide by this process of rapid erosion. In many cases where sulfuric acid is a key weathering agent, a net release of CO2 to the atmosphere occurs. This suggests that a causal link between erosion in mountain belts and climate change through the sequestration of CO2, if it exists, must operate through a process other than chemical weathering driven by landsliding. Plain Language Summary There is a long-standing debate surrounding the link between erosion and climate. It is often suggested that as temperatures increase, rainier and stormier weather could increase erosion of rock; as that rock is exposed, silicate minerals within could break down, which, on long time scales, can remove CO2 from the atmosphere, lowering global temperatures and acting as a negative feedback. Recent studies have shown that landslide deposits are key locations for the link between chemical weathering and physical erosion in some mountain belts. To test how landslides affect the erosion-climate link, we used samples of water seeping through landslides in Taiwan and New Zealand to calculate the amount of carbon dioxide that is either absorbed or released through this chemical reaction. We find that the large amount of freshly exposed rock in Taiwanese landslide deposits contains significant carbonate rock and sulfide minerals; the net result of the weathering of these minerals is a release of carbon dioxide, which inverts the traditional perspective on the role erosion plays in controlling carbon dioxide release. In some mountain belts, it seems that increased erosion and resulting landsliding may act to increase carbon dioxide in the air, opening further questions into the nature of erosional-climatic links.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{SchulzeMakuchWagnerKounavesetal.2018,
  author    = {Schulze-Makuch, Dirk and Wagner, Dirk and Kounaves, Samuel P. and Mangelsdorf, Kai and Devine, Kevin G. and de Vera, Jean-Pierre and Schmitt-Kopplin, Philippe and Grossart, Hans-Peter and Parro, Victor and Kaupenjohann, Martin and Galy, Albert and Schneider, Beate and Airo, Alessandro and Froesler, Jan and Davila, Alfonso F. and Arens, Felix L. and Caceres, Luis and Cornejo, Francisco Solis and Carrizo, Daniel and Dartnell, Lewis and DiRuggiero, Jocelyne and Flury, Markus and Ganzert, Lars and Gessner, Mark O. and Grathwohl, Peter and Guan, Lisa and Heinz, Jacob and Hess, Matthias and Keppler, Frank and Maus, Deborah and McKay, Christopher P. and Meckenstock, Rainer U. and Montgomery, Wren and Oberlin, Elizabeth A. and Probst, Alexander J. and Saenz, Johan S. and Sattler, Tobias and Schirmack, Janosch and Sephton, Mark A. and Schloter, Michael and Uhl, Jenny and Valenzuela, Bernardita and Vestergaard, Gisle and Woermer, Lars and Zamorano, Pedro},
  title     = {Transitory microbial habitat in the hyperarid Atacama Desert},
  series = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
  volume    = {115},
  journal   = {Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America},
  number    = {11},
  publisher = {National Acad. of Sciences},
  address   = {Washington},
  issn      = {0027-8424},
  doi       = {10.1073/pnas.1714341115},
  pages     = {2670 -- 2675},
  year      = {2018},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{BufeCookGalyetal.2022,
  author    = {Bufe, Aaron and Cook, Kristen L. and Galy, Albert and Wittmann, Hella and Hovius, Niels},
  title     = {The effect of lithology on the relationship between denudation rate and chemical weathering pathways},
  series = {Earth surface dynamics},
  volume    = {10},
  journal   = {Earth surface dynamics},
  number    = {3},
  publisher = {Copernicus},
  address   = {G{\"o}ttingen},
  issn      = {2196-6311},
  doi       = {10.5194/esurf-10-513-2022},
  pages     = {513 -- 530},
  year      = {2022},
  abstract  = {The denudation of rocks in mountain belts exposes a range of fresh minerals to the surface of the Earth that are chemically weathered by acidic and oxygenated fluids. The impact of the resulting coupling between denudation and weathering rates fundamentally depends on the types of minerals that are weathering. Whereas silicate weathering sequesters CO2, the combination of sulfide oxidation and carbonate dissolution emits CO2 to the atmosphere. Here, we combine the concentrations of dissolved major elements in stream waters with Be-10 basin-wide denudation rates from 35 small catchments in eastern Tibet to elucidate the importance of lithology in modulating the relationships between denudation rate, chemical weathering pathways, and CO2 consumption or release. Our catchments span 3 orders of magnitude in denudation rate in low-grade flysch, high-grade metapelites, and granitoid rocks. For each stream, we estimate the concentrations of solutes sourced from silicate weathering, carbonate dissolution, and sulfide oxidation using a mixing model. We find that for all lithologies, cation concentrations from silicate weathering are largely independent of denudation rate, but solute concentrations from carbonates and, where present, sulfides increase with increasing denudation rate. With increasing denudation rates, weathering may therefore shift from consuming to releasing CO2 in both (meta)sedimentary and granitoid lithologies. For a given denudation rate, we report dissolved solid concentrations and inferred weathering fluxes in catchments underlain by (meta)sedimentary rock that are 2-10 times higher compared to catchments containing granitoid lithologies, even though climatic and topographic parameters do not vary systematically between these catchments. Thus, varying proportions of exposed (meta)sedimentary and igneous rocks during orogenesis could lead to changes in the sequestration and release of CO2 that are independent of denudation rate.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{EmbersonHoviusGalyetal.2016,
  author    = {Emberson, Robert and Hovius, Niels and Galy, Albert and Marc, Odin},
  title     = {Oxidation of sulfides and rapid weathering in recent landslides},
  series = {Earth surface dynamics},
  volume    = {4},
  journal   = {Earth surface dynamics},
  publisher = {Copernicus},
  address   = {G{\"o}ttingen},
  issn      = {2196-6311},
  doi       = {10.5194/esurf-4-727-2016},
  pages     = {727 -- 742},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {Bedrock landslides, by excavating deep below saprolite-rock interfaces, create conditions for weathering in which all mineral phases in a lithology are initially unweathered within landslide deposits. As a result, the most labile phases dominate the weathering immediately after mobilisation and during a transient period of depletion. This mode of dissolution can strongly alter the overall output of solutes from catchments and their contribution to global chemical cycles if landslide-derived material is retained in catchments for extended periods after mass wasting.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{EmbersonGalyHovius2017,
  author    = {Emberson, Robert and Galy, Albert and Hovius, Niels},
  title     = {Combined effect of carbonate and biotite dissolution in landslides biases silicate weathering proxies},
  series = {Geochimica et cosmochimica acta : journal of the Geochemical Society and the Meteoritical Society},
  volume    = {213},
  journal   = {Geochimica et cosmochimica acta : journal of the Geochemical Society and the Meteoritical Society},
  publisher = {Elsevier},
  address   = {Oxford},
  issn      = {0016-7037},
  doi       = {10.1016/j.gca.2017.07.014},
  pages     = {418 -- 434},
  year      = {2017},
  abstract  = {Long-term estimates of the dissolution of silicate rock are generally derived from a range of isotopic proxies, such as the radiogenic strontium isotope ratio (Sr-87/Sr-86), which are preserved in sediment archives. For these systems to fairly represent silicate weathering, the changes in isotopic ratios in terrestrial surface waters should correspond to changes in the overall silicate dissolution. This assumes that the silicate mineral phases that act as sources of a given isotope dissolve at a rate that is proportional to the overall silicate weathering. Bedrock landsliding exhumes large quantities of fresh rock for weathering in transient storage, and rapid weathering in these deposits is controlled primarily by dissolution of the most reactive phases. In this study, we test the hypothesis that preferential weathering of these labile minerals can decouple the dissolution of strontium sources from the actual silicate weathering rates in the rapidly eroding Western Southern Alps (WSA) of New Zealand. We find that rapid dissolution of relatively radiogenic calcite and biotite in landslides leads to high local fluxes in strontium with isotopic ratios that offer no clear discrimination between sources. These higher fluxes of radiogenic strontium are in contrast to silicate weathering rates in landslides that are not systematically elevated. On a mountain belt scale, radiogenic strontium fluxes are not coupled to volumes of recent landslides in large (>100 km(2)) catchments, but silicate weathering fluxes are. Such decoupling is likely due first to the broad variability in the strontium content of carbonate minerals, and second to the combination of radiogenic strontium released from both biotite and carbonate in recent landslides. This study supports previous work suggesting the limited utility of strontium isotopes as a system to study silicate weathering in the WSA. Crucially however, in settings where bedrock landsliding is a dominant erosive process there is potential for both random and systematic bias in isotope proxies if the most reactive phases exposed for dissolution by landslides disproportionately contribute to the proxy of choice. This clearly suggests that the isotopic composition of marine Sr is a proxy for periods of rapid mountain uplift and erosion rather than for the associated enhanced silicate weathering. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.},
  language  = {en}
}
@article{EmbersonHoviusGalyetal.2016,
  author    = {Emberson, Robert and Hovius, Niels and Galy, Albert and Marc, Odin},
  title     = {Chemical weathering in active mountain belts controlled by stochastic bedrock landsliding},
  series = {Nature geoscience},
  volume    = {9},
  journal   = {Nature geoscience},
  publisher = {Nature Publ. Group},
  address   = {New York},
  issn      = {1752-0894},
  doi       = {10.1038/NGEO2600},
  pages     = {42 -- +},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {A link between chemical weathering and physical erosion exists at the catchment scale over a wide range of erosion rates(1,2). However, in mountain environments, where erosion rates are highest, weathering may be kinetically limited(3-5) and therefore decoupled from erosion. In active mountain belts, erosion is driven by bedrock landsliding(6) at rates that depend strongly on the occurrence of extreme rainfall or seismicity(7). Although landslides affect only a small proportion of the landscape, bedrock landsliding can promote the collection and slow percolation of surface runoff in highly fragmented rock debris and create favourable conditions for weathering. Here we show from analysis of surface water chemistry in the Southern Alps of New Zealand that weathering in bedrock landslides controls the variability in solute load of these mountain rivers. We find that systematic patterns in surface water chemistry are strongly associated with landslide occurrence at scales from a single hillslope to an entire mountain belt, and that landslides boost weathering rates and river solute loads over decades. We conclude that landslides couple erosion and weathering in fast-eroding uplands and, thus, mountain weathering is a stochastic process that is sensitive to climatic and tectonic controls on mass wasting processes.},
  language  = {en}
}