PROGRESS aims to establish easily quantifiable quartz defects as provenance indicators. Luminescence and ESR signal changes in the rock cycle are not well understood. Effective fingerprinting requires stable signals matching host rocks and, ideally, unchanged over time and transport. We hypothesize that dynamic signals in quartz can indicate residence time in temporary storage environments, a challenge for traditional accessory mineral methods.
Laboratory experiments support deductive reasoning, though they can't fully replicate geological timescales or extreme conditions. Thus, PROGRESS also uses natural samples to reflect geological processes, combining deductive and inductive reasoning. Our multiscale approach spans from billions to thousands of years, aiming to develop a quartz-based fingerprinting method impactful for provenance studies.
Using loess samples, we found that E1' (oxygen deficiency) and peroxy (oxygen excess) signal intensities, along with OSL sensitivity, are higher in regions with ancient source rocks, supporting our hypothesis. We analysed quartz from rocks with known crystallization or detrital zircon U-Pb ages and their sediments, focusing on natural cause-effect relationships.
PROGRESS significantly advanced quartz defect understanding as provenance indicators. Our findings support the hypothesis that oxygen-related defects form via inefficient geological processes like alpha damage. A key milestone was establishing a unique multi-spectral lab integrating OSL, TL, ESR, and CL on an SEM platform, enabling micron-scale luminescence and defect studies.
In Work Package I (Source Rock), we sampled granitoids in southeast Arizona's Basin and Range and studied regional metamorphism effects in Romania's South Carpathians (Albesti Granite). Work Package II (Sediment Conveyor Belt) explored sediment changes during transport, sunlight exposure, and irradiation, with samples from diverse lithologies.
We examined sandstones from Eastern Europe (Fusaru, Kliwa formations, and Yampil Member) to assess geological controls on quartz's trapped charge characteristics. Single-grain OSL analysis distinguished sediments from single vs. multiple sources and revealed factors like metamorphism affecting quartz sensitivity. Combining OSL, TL, ESR, and CL analyses, we studied quartz sensitization (increase in light output delivered per unit dose) mechanisms in granites of known ages (Catalina and Retezat granites). Higher OSL sensitization by exposure to light and dosing in Catalina granite correlates with TL emissions, Ti-related CL signals, and Ti/Ge ESR signals. Titanium is a widely used thermometer in igneous and metamorphic rocks. As such, a connection between luminescence properties of detrital quartz and trace elemental concentrations in quartz, which are commonly traced to the specific origin of that quartz, e.g. higher Ti solubilities are found in higher temperature igneous rocks, is proposed. However, natural sensitization exceeds lab-induced levels, suggesting environmental amplification factors to be identified.
