Articles | Volume 12, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-12-679-2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-12-679-2024
Research article
 | 
07 May 2024
Research article |  | 07 May 2024

Cosmogenic nuclide-derived downcutting rates of canyons within large limestone plateaus of southern Massif Central (France) reveal a different regional speleogenesis of karst networks

Oswald Malcles, Philippe Vernant, David Fink, Gaël Cazes, Jean-François Ritz, Toshiyuki Fujioka, and Jean Chéry

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Cited articles

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Balco, G.: Production rate calculations for cosmic-ray-muon-produced 10Be and 26Al benchmarked against geological calibration data, Quat. Geochronol., 39, 150–173, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quageo.2017.02.001, 2017. 
Balco, G. and Rovey, C. W.: An isochron method for cosmogenic-nuclide dating of buried soils and sediments, Am. J. Sci., 308, 1083–1114, https://doi.org/10.2475/10.2008.02, 2008. 
Braucher, R., Bourlès, D., Merchel, S., Vidal Romani, J., Fernadez-Mosquera, D., Marti, K., Léanni, L., Chauvet, F., Arnold, M., Aumaître, G., and Keddadouche, K.: Determination of muon attenuation lengths in depth profiles from in situ produced cosmogenic nuclides, Nucl. Instrum. Meth. B, 294, 484–490, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nimb.2012.05.023, 2013. 
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In the Grands Causses area (Southern France), we study the relationship between the evolution of the river, its incision through time, and the location of the nearby caves. It is commonly accepted that horizontal caves are formed during a period of river stability (no incision) at the elevation of the river. Our original results show that it is wrong in our case study. Therefore, another model of cave formation is proposed that does not rely on direct river control over cave locations.
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