Origin and significance of cosmogenic signatures in vesicles of lunar basalt 15016

Lunar basalt 15016 (~3.3 Ga) is among the most vesicular (50% by volume) basalts recovered by the Apollo missions. We investigated the possible occurrence of indigenous lunar nitrogen and noble gases trapped in vesicles within basalt 15016, by crushing several cm-sized chips. Matrix/mineral gases were also extracted from crush residues by fusion with a CO₂ laser. No magmatic/primordial component could be identified; all isotope compositions, including those of vesicles, pointed to a cosmogenic origin. We found that vesicles contained ~0.2%, ~0.02%, ~0.002%, and ~0.02% of the total amount of cosmogenic ²¹Ne, ³⁸Ar, ⁸³Kr, and ¹²⁶Xe, respectively, produced over the basalt's 300 Myr of exposure. Diffusion/recoil of cosmogenic isotopes from the basaltic matrix/minerals to intergrain joints and vesicles is discussed. The enhanced proportion of cosmogenic Xe isotopes relative to Kr detected in vesicles could be the result of kinetic fractionation, through which preferential retention of Xe isotopes over Kr within vesicles might have occurred during diffusion from the vesicle volume to the outer space through microleaks. This study suggests that cosmogenic loss, known to be significant for ³He and ²¹Ne, and to a lesser extent for ³⁶Ar (Signer et al. 1977 ), also occurs to a negligible extent for the heaviest noble gases Kr and Xe.     

Recent transfer of coastal sediments to the Laurentian Channel,Lower St. Lawrence Estuary (Eastern Canada), through submarine canyon and fan systems

Multibeam sonar data, acoustic sub-bottom profiles and box cores were used to study the activity of submarine canyons and fans near the city of Les Escoumins, on the North Shore of the Lower St. Lawrence Estuary (Eastern Canada). The multibeam data were used to generate a high-resolution digital terrain model that reveals the presence of a large number of canyons and fans along the northern slopes of the Laurentian Channel. This paper focuses on two of the larger canyons, and their associated submarine fans. The sub-bottom profiles on the fans reveal high-amplitude reflections at the sediment/water interface and near the seafloor surface, indicating the occurrence of layers of coarse material. A turbidite was observed in a box core sampled in one of the fans, confirming the nature of the coarse layer. Geophysical and sedimentological data indicate that the canyons and fans play an important role in transferring coastal sandy sediments to the deeper marine environments by longshore drift-initiated turbidity flows, and thereby contribute to the negative sediment budget along the coast. The morphology of the canyons indicates that they were produced by a combination of erosive turbidity flows and retrogressive failures. The two box cores sampled on the fans reveal a recent (~last 60 years) quasi-exponential increase in sand content near the surface of the cores, possibly reflecting recent deforestation and/or increased coastal erosion.