Abstract
A link between chemical weathering and physical erosion exists at the catchment scale over a wide range of erosion rates1,2. However, in mountain environments, where erosion rates are highest, weathering may be kinetically limited3,4,5 and therefore decoupled from erosion. In active mountain belts, erosion is driven by bedrock landsliding6 at rates that depend strongly on the occurrence of extreme rainfall or seismicity7. 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.
This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution
Access options
Subscribe to this journal
Receive 12 print issues and online access
$259.00 per year
only $21.58 per issue
Rent or buy this article
Prices vary by article type
from$1.95
to$39.95
Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Riebe, C. S., Kirchner, J. W. & Finkel, R. C. Erosional and climatic effects on long-term chemical weathering rates in granitic landscapes spanning diverse climate regimes. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 224, 547–562 (2004).
Lyons, W. B. Chemical weathering in high-sediment-yielding watersheds. New Zeal. J. Geophys. Res. 110, F01008 (2005).
Ferrier, K. L. & Kirchner, J. W. Effects of physical erosion on chemical denudation rates: A numerical modeling study of soil-mantled hillslopes. Earth Planet Sci. Lett. 272, 591–599 (2008).
Hilley, G. E., Chamberlain, C. P., Moon, S., Porder, S. & Willett, S. D. Competition between erosion and reaction kinetics in controlling silicate-weathering rates. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 293, 191–199 (2010).
Dixon, J. L., Hartshorn, A. S., Heimsath, A. M., DiBiase, R. A. & Whipple, K. X. Chemical weathering response to tectonic forcing: A soils perspective from the San Gabriel Mountains, California. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 323-324, 40–49 (2012).
Hovius, N., Stark, C. & Allen, P. Sediment flux from a mountain belt derived by landslide mapping. Geology 25, 231–234 (1997).
Dadson, S., Hovius, N., Chen, H. & Dade, W. Links between erosion, runoff variability and seismicity in the Taiwan orogen. Nature 426, 648–651 (2003).
Huh, Y. & Edmond, J. The fluvial geochemistry of the rivers of Eastern Siberia: III. Tributaries of the Lena and Anabar draining the basement terrain of the Siberian Craton and the Trans-Baikal Highlands. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 63, 967–987 (1999).
West, A. J., Galy, A. & Bickle, M. Tectonic and climatic controls on silicate weathering. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 235, 211–228 (2005).
Maher, K. & Chamberlain, C. P. Hydrologic regulation of chemical weathering and the geologic carbon cycle. Science. 343, 1502–1504 (2014).
Larsen, I. J. et al. Rapid soil production and weathering in the Southern Alps, New Zealand. Science 343, 637–640 (2014).
Davies, T. R. & McSaveney, M. J. The role of rock fragmentation in the motion of large landslides. Eng. Geol. 109, 67–79 (2009).
Lo, H., Chou, P., Hsu, S., Chao, C. & Wang, C. Using borehole prospecting technologies to determine the correlation between fracture properties and hydraulic conductivity : A case study in Taiwan. J. Environ. Eng. Geophys. 17, 27–37 (2012).
Tippett, J. & Kamp, P. Fission track analysis of the late Cenozoic vertical kinematics of continental Pacific crust, South Island, New Zealand. J. Geophys. Res. 98, 16119–16148 (1993).
Bull, W. B. & Cooper, A. F. Uplifted marine terraces along the Alpine Fault, New Zealand. Science 234, 1225–1228 (1986).
Henderson, R. & Thompson, S. Extreme rainfalls in the Southern Alps of New Zealand. J. Hydrol. N.Z. 38, 309–330 (1999).
Bellingham, P. & Richardson, S. Tree seedling growth and survival over 6 years across different microsites in a temperate rain forest. Can. J. For. Res. 918, 910–918 (2006).
Hilton, R. G., Meunier, P., Hovius, N., Bellingham, P. J. & Galy, A. Landslide impact on organic carbon cycling in a temperate montane forest. Earth Surf. Process. Landf. 36, 1670–1679 (2011).
Grapes, R. & Watanabe, T. Metamorphism and uplift of Alpine schist in the Franz Josef-Fox Glacier area of the Southern Alps, New Zealand. J. Metamorph. Geol. 10, 171–180 (1992).
Adams, C. J. Rb-Sr age and strontium isotope characteristics of the Greenland Group, Buller Terrane, New Zealand, and correlations at the East Gondwanaland margin. N.Z. J. Geol. Geophys. 47, 189–200 (2004).
Calmels, D. et al. Contribution of deep groundwater to the weathering budget in a rapidly eroding mountain belt, Taiwan. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 303, 48–58 (2011).
Andermann, C. et al. Impact of transient groundwater storage on the discharge of Himalayan rivers. Nature Geosci. 5, 127–132 (2012).
GNS Science Geothermal and Groundwater Database (GNS Science, accessed 3 August 2015); http://ggw.gns.cri.nz/ggwdata
Cox, S. et al. Changes in hot spring temperature and hydrogeology of the Alpine Fault hanging wall, New Zealand, induced by distal South Island earthquakes. Geofluids 15, 216–239 (2015).
Larsen, I. J., Montgomery, D. R. & Korup, O. Landslide erosion controlled by hillslope material. Nature Geosci. 3, 247–251 (2010).
Jacobson, A. D., Blum, J. D., Chamberlain, C. P., Craw, D. C. & Koons, P. O. K. Climatic and tectonic controls on chemical weathering in the New Zealand Southern Alps. Geochem. Cosmochim. Acta 67, 29–46 (2003).
Leith, K., Moore, J. R., Amann, F. & Loew, S. In situ stress control on microcrack generation and macroscopic extensional fracture in exhuming bedrock. J. Geophys. Res. 119, 594–615 (2014).
Glade, T. Establishing the frequency and magnitude of landslide-triggering rainstorm events in New Zealand. Environ. Geol. 35, 160–174 (1998).
Hovius, N. et al. Prolonged seismically induced erosion and the mass balance of a large earthquake. Earth Planet. Sci. Lett. 304, 347–355 (2011).
New Zealand National Climate Database (NIWA, accessed 15 January 2015); http://www.cliflo.niwa.co.nz
Moore, J., Jacobson, A. D., Holmden, C. & Craw, D. Tracking the relationship between mountain uplift, silicate weathering, and long-term CO2 consumption with Ca isotopes: Southern Alps, New Zealand. Chem. Geol. 341, 110–127 (2013).
Verhoeven, W., Herrmann, R., Eiden, R. & Klemm, O. A comparison of the chemical composition of fog and rainwater collected in the Fichtelgebirge, Federal Republic of Germany, and from the South Island of New Zealand. Theor. Appl. Climatol. 38, 210–221 (1987).
Acknowledgements
We thank the New Zealand Department of Conservation for permission to sample the field sites (Authority number 38154-RES), A. Golly for assistance in the field, and R. Hilton, A. J. West and C. France-Lanord for discussion. Sample analysis was carried out in the GFZ HELGES lab with assistance from J. Schuessler and C. Zorn. A. Heimsath provided advice which greatly improved the manuscript.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
R.E., N.H. and A.G. conceived the study and collected the samples. R.E. carried out lab analysis and data processing of chemical samples. O.M. completed the landslide data and calculated volumes. R.E. wrote the paper with significant input from all other authors.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Supplementary information
Supplementary Information
Supplementary Information (PDF 2484 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Emberson, R., Hovius, N., Galy, A. et al. Chemical weathering in active mountain belts controlled by stochastic bedrock landsliding. Nature Geosci 9, 42–45 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2600
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ngeo2600
This article is cited by
-
River thorium concentrations can record bedrock fracture processes including some triggered by distant seismic events
Nature Communications (2023)
-
Stressed rocks cause big landslides
Nature Geoscience (2021)
-
An unshakable carbon budget for the Himalaya
Nature Geoscience (2021)
-
Topographic stress control on bedrock landslide size
Nature Geoscience (2021)
-
Tropical cyclones likely enhance chemical weathering but suppress atmospheric CO2 consumption in landslide-dominated catchments
Biogeochemistry (2021)