Plio-Pleistocene evolution of the north Alpine drainage system: new constraints from detrital thermochronology of foreland deposits

Abstract

The evolution of drainage systems in and around active orogens may be strongly affected by climatic or tectonic processes. Information on the drainage evolution is stored in the sediments of the foreland depocentres. We investigated the provenance of two key deposits adjacent to the Central Alps, the Pliocene Sundgau gravels and the Pleistocene Hohere Deckenschotter by applying detrital thermochronology. Combined with provenance information from Rhine Graben deposits, we propose a reconstruction of the north Alpine drainage system since the middle Pliocene and discuss potential controlling mechanisms. Our data show that the Rhine Graben received detritus from the Alpine realm already during the Pliocene, indicating two different river systems—the proto-Rhine and the Aare–Doubs—draining the Alpine realm toward the North Sea and Mediterranean Sea. The investigated sediments contain detritus from two central Alpine sources, one showing a regional exhumational equilibrium and the other characterized by increasing exhumation rates. Discharge of the latter source ceased after ~2 Ma, reflecting a northward shift of the main Alpine drainage divide. Between ~2.0 and 1.2 Ma, the drainage system was affected by a major change, which we explain as resulting from a change in the Alpine stress field leading to tectonic exhumation and topography reduction in the area of the southern Aar massif. Generally, it seems that between ~4 and 1.2 Ma, the drainage system was mainly controlled by tectonic processes, despite first glaciations that already affected the north-Alpine foreland by ~2 Ma. The drainage system only seems to have reacted to the late Cenozoic climate changes after ~1.2 Ma, i.e., at the time of the most intense Alpine glaciation. At that time, the course of the Rhine River shifted toward the area of the Hegau volcanics, and the size of the Rhine River catchment became strongly reduced.