Research Progress on Luminescence Dating of Rock Surfaces and Its Application

There are many examples of exposed or buried rock surfaces whose age is of interest to geologists and archaeologists. Luminescence dating is a well-established method of absolute chronology which has been successfully applied to a wide range of fine-grained sediments from hundreds of years to several hundred thousand years. Optical stimulated luminescence(OSL)has been recently proposed as a new method to date these rock surfaces(Laskaris et al., 2011; Sohbati et al., 2012a; Chapot et al., 2012; Pederson et al., 2014; Sohbati et al., 2015; Freiesleben et al., 2015). The basic principle is that luminescence signal of rock surface will soon decay when the rock is exposed to sunlight. When the rock surface is turned to be buried side, the OSL signal begins to accumulate again. With the variation of residual luminescence with depth, it is possible to estimate exposure and burial history of the rock. This article describes briefly the different luminescence dating methods for rock surfaces, its progress, application examples and present problems. For instance, Sohbati et al.(2011)studied the depth dependence of the bleaching of the IRSL signal from granitic rocks, Laskaris and Liritzis(2011)proposed a mathematical function to describe the attenuation of daylight into rock surfaces, Sohbati et al.(2012a)developed their model to include the environmental dose rate, Sohbati et al.(2012b)overcame the problem of parameter estimation by using a known-age road-cut sample for calibration, Sohbati et al.(2012c)further developed the OSL surface exposure dating model by including the simultaneous effect of daylight bleaching and environmental dose rate, and so on. These studies indicate that OSL dating method for rock surface can be applied widely to studies of geological and geomorphological evolution, archeology and Quaternary tectonic activity. © 2017, Editorial Office of Seismology and Geology. All right reserved.