Cooling ages

Dodson M. H. (1979). Theory of cooling ages. In Lectures in Isotope Geology, E. Jager and I C. Hunziker, eds., Berlin Springer-Verlag. 

Relationship between cooling rate and cooling age of a mineral theory and... 

In interpreting cooling ages across a landscape, the most relevant isotherm is that of the thermochronometer s closure temperature. Figure 2 shows that the 60 °C isotherm, a typical Tc for the apatite (U-Th)/He system in a slowly eroding landscape, will be deflected to about 45%... 

Caveats in interpreting spatial patterns of cooling ages and cooling histories... 

Detritus from a paleolandscape contains information on the paleorelief (in fact, the paleohypsometry), of its former catchment, through its probability distribution of cooling ages, provided the paleoerosion rate can be estimated, and some assumption about the spatial uniformity of erosion (and bedrock abundance of the thermochronometric mineral) can be made. The former could potentially be estimated from mineral-pair methods, such as using coupled apatite He and apatite FT ages from the same clast, or from AERs of bedrock samples that record the erosion rate through the time interval in question. In general, the latter constraint must be assumed, however. 

Braun J, Robert X (2005) Constraints on the rate of post-orogenic erosional decay from low-temperature thermochronological data application to the Dabie Shan, China. Earth Surf Proc Land 30 1203-1225 Brewer ID, Burbank DW, Hodges KV (2003) Modelling detrital cooling-age populations insights from two Himalayan catchments. Basin Res 15 305-320... 

Ganguly J. and Tirone M. (2001) Relationship between cooling rate and cooling age of a mineral theory and applications to meteorites. A/cteorir. Planet. Sci. 36, 167-176. 

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