Adapted from: Dunai and Stuart (2009) Quaternary Geochronology, doi:10.1016/j.quageo.2009.1004.1003

Introduction

The use of in situ-produced cosmogenic nuclides has developed into a versatile quantitative tool for studying the Earth's surface. Since 2004, two major international initiatives (CRONUS-EU in Europe and CRONUS-Earth in North America) have worked on refining the methodology, and on achieving a consensus regarding scaling of the cosmic-ray flux. This work is likely to affect the way exposure ages or erosion rates are calculated in the future. Currently, exposure ages and erosion rates are calculated using a variety of protocols (Lal 1991, Dunai 2000, Stone 2000, Dunai 2001a, Desilets and Zreda 2003, Lifton et al. 2008), for discussion see Chapter 2. In order to allow the comparison of age and/or rate information from different studies, as well as safeguarding the future value of published cosmogenic data, it is necessary that all the information required to calculate exposure ages and erosion rates is reported. Guidelines are proposed here for publishing in situ cosmogenic-nuclide data for exposure-age and erosion-rate determinations. Similar reporting guidelines are used for other dating techniques, such as radiocarbon dating (Stuiver and Polach 1977, Mook and van der Plicht 1999, van der Plicht and Hogg 2006), and more generally for isotope geochemistry (Goldstein et al. 2003). These guidelines significantly expand on earlier suggestions on publication of cosmogenic-nuclide data (Gosse et al. 1996), reflecting the ongoing refinement of cosmogenic-nuclide methodology.