Abstract We report erosion rates determined from in situ produced cosmogenic 10 Be across a spectrum of Australian climatic zones, from the soil-mantled SE Australian escarpment through semi-arid bedrock ranges of southern and central Australia, to soil-mantled ridges at a monsoonal tropical site near the Arnhem escarpment. Climate has a major effect on the balance between erosion and transport and also on erosion rate: the highest rates, averaging 35 m Ma −1 , were from soil-mantled, transport-limited spurs in the humid temperate region around the base of the SE escarpment; the lowest, averaging about 1.5 m Ma −1 , were from the steep, weathering-limited, rocky slopes of Kings Canyon and Mt Sonder in semi-arid central Australia. Between these extremes, other factors come into play including rock-type, slope, and recruitment of vegetation. We measured intermediate average erosion rates from rocky slopes in the semi-arid Flinders and MacDonnell ranges, and from soil-mantled sites at both semi-arid Tyler Pass in central Australia and the tropical monsoonal site. At soil-mantled sites in both the SE and tropical north, soil production generally declines exponentially with increasing soil thickness, although at the tropical site this relationship does not persist under thin soil thicknesses and the relationship here is ‘humped’. Results from Tyler Pass show uniform soil thicknesses and soil production rates of about 6.5 m Ma −1 , supporting a longstanding hypothesis that equilibrium, soil-mantled hillslopes erode in concert with stream incision and form convex-up spurs of constant curvature. Moreover, weathering-limited slopes and spurs also occur in the same region: the average erosion rate for rocky sandstone spurs at Glen Helen is 7 m Ma −1 , similar to the Tyler Pass soil-mantled slopes, whereas the average rate for high, quartzite spurs at Mount Sonder is 1.8 m Ma −1 . The extremely low rates measured across bedrock-dominated landscapes suggest that the ridge–valley topography observed today is likely to have been shaped as long ago as the Late Miocene. These rates and processes quantified across different, undisturbed landscapes provide critical data for landscape evolution models.

Passive margin escarpments are extensively studied around the world, and understanding their evolution continues to present one of the more compelling interdisciplinary challenges tackled by earth scientists today. Escarpments reflect the morphotectonic development of passive margins and can separate regions with different climatic histories, but the inferred rapid rates of escarpment retreat have been at odds with actual measurements of land surface denudation. In this paper we present results from extensive cosmogenic 10 Be and 26 Al analyses across the escarpment of southeastern Australia to quantify the erosional processes evolving the highland, lowland, and scarp face landscapes. We document new relationships between soil production rates and soil thicknesses for the highland and lowland landscapes and compare these soil production functions with those published in our earlier studies from the highlands and at the base of the escarpment. Both new functions define exponential declines of soil production rates with increasing soil depths, with inferred intercepts of 65 and 42 m/m.y. for the highland and lowland sites, respectively, and slopes of –0.02. Exposed bedrock at both of the new sites erodes more slowly than the maximum soil production rates, at 22 ± 3 and 9 ± 2 m/m.y., respectively, thus suggesting a “humped” soil production function. We suggest that instead of a humped function, lithologic variations set the emergence of bedrock, which evolves into the tors that are found extensively across the highlands and at the crest of the escarpment by eroding more slowly than the surrounding soil-mantled landscape. Compared to soil production rates from previous work using 10 Be and 26 Al measurements from two different sites, these results show remarkable agreement and specifically quantify a soil production function for the region where soil production rates decline exponentially with increasing soil thickness, with an intercept of 53 m/m.y. and a slope of –0.02. Erosion rates determined from 10 Be concentrations from outcropping tors, bedrock, and saprolite from a main spur ridge perpendicular to the escarpment, and sediments from first- and zero-order catchments draining the main ridges, show a clear linear decline with elevation, from ∼35 m/m.y. near the escarpment base to ∼3 m/m.y. at the escarpment crest. This order of magnitude difference in erosion rates may be due to increases in stream incision with distance downslope on the escarpment, or to decreases in precipitation with elevation, neither of which we quantify here. The rates do agree, in general, with our soil production functions, suggesting that the biogenic processes actively eroding soil-mantled landscapes are shaping the evolution of the escarpment despite our observations of block fall and debris-flow processes across the steep regions near the scarp crest. Our results support recent results from studies using low-temperature thermochronology, which suggest that the escarpment is relatively stable after having retreated rapidly immediately following rifting. Differences between our rates of surface erosion caused by processes active today and the scarp retreat rates needed to place the escarpment in its present position need to be explained by future work to untangle the mysteries of escarpment evolution.

Quantifying erosion rates and processes remains a central focus of studying the Earth's surface. Measurement of in situ–produced cosmogenic radionuclides (CRNs) enables a level of quantification that would otherwise be impossible or fraught with uncertainty and expense. Remarkable success stories punctuate the field over the last decade as CRN-based methodologies are pushed to new limits. Inherent to all is an assumption of steady-state rates and processes. This paper focuses on the use of cosmogenic 10 Be and 26 Al, extracted from quartz in bedrock, saprolite, and detrital material to quantify sediment production or erosion rates and processes. Previous results from two very different field areas are reviewed to highlight the potential for non-steady-state processes in shaping soil-mantled landscapes. With this potential in mind, a numerical model is presented, following a review of the CRN conceptual framework, to test the effects of non-steady-state erosion rates and processes on CRN concentrations. Results from this model focus on 10 Be concentrations accumulated under modeled variations in erosion rates with different ranges, frequencies, and styles of variability. In general, the higher the maximum erosion rate, the higher the impact on the CRN concentration and, therefore, the more likely that point measurements will capture the variable signal. Conversely, the higher the frequency of erosional variation, the less likely point measures are to accurately determine rates, but the closer the inferred rate is to the mean of the long-term erosion rate. Modeling results are applicable for point-specific erosion rates, but endorse the catchment-averaged approach for determining average rates. Potentially large uncertainties emphasize the need for careful sample selection, with adequate numbers of samples collected for quantifying the processes eroding the land. The two field examples show how analyzing enough samples can define a clear soil production function despite the potential for non-steady-state processes. The model presented here is ready for application to catchment-averaged processes, as well as modeling the role of muons in variable erosion rate scenarios.