Enhanced Denudation of the Emeishan Large Igneous Province and Precipitation Forcing in the Late Permian

Hydroclimate is an important factor controlling landscape evolution. But establishing the impact of hydroclimate is complicated by the influences of other processes and is especially hard to prove for those in deep time from geological record. During the late Permian, voluminous basaltic sediments were derived from the erosion of the Emeishan large igneous province in western South China. They provide a unique record critical in understanding the responses of tropical basaltic erosion to hydroclimate change without impacts of orogenic uplift, lithologic variation, vegetational difference and glacial-interglacial change. Sampled successions define a negative carbon isotope excursion capable of making regional and global stratigraphic correlations in the middle Wuchiapingian interval corresponding to the final phase of the late Paleozoic ice age. This interval is associated with a petrofacies shift and a decreasing source weathering intensity, a downward shift of erosion loci, and a reduced coastal water paleosalinity. Applying present-day temperature dependence pattern of basaltic weathering and using land surface temperatures approximated from nearby paleo-seawaters, denudation rates were calculated for the Emeishan basaltic province and shows an increase from ∼71 to ∼107 m/Ma. This erosional acceleration is temporally correlated with a decrease in paleosalinity and likely linked to enhanced freshwater discharge in the middle Wuchiapingian. Scaling and landscape erosion modeling suggest ∼80%–130% increase in catchment precipitation could have driven this acceleration in denudation. Our work provides a positive test for the hydroclimate forcing on landscape erosion in deep time and underlines the mechanistic linkage of sediments with erosion and climate change.