OSL-Dating: Constraining the Pleistocene environmental history of the Atacama: Extending the age range of luminescence dating (D05)

• Subject Area: Physical Geography
• Term: from 2016 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 268236062

This projects aims to extend the age range of luminescence dating from ~0.2-0.4 Ma towards 1 Ma. The landscape of the Atacama is dominated by clastic deposits, and luminescence dating offers a widely applicable and versatile technique for constraining the timing of environmental changes. Extending the age range will enable the temporal gap between geochronological methods from other sub-projects to be spanned, for example, whereas the upper limit of radiocarbon dating is ~50 ka, the lower limit of cosmogenic burial dating is ~0.5 Ma.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1211: Earth - Evolution at the Dry Limit
• Major Instrumentation: TL/DA-20 reader with Violet stimulation
• Instrumentation Group: 0260 Strahlungsmeßplätze (außer 033, 330-339, 405 und 615-619)
• Applicant Institution: Universität zu Köln
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Helmut Brückner; Professorin Dr. Georgina King, Ph.D., until 11/2016