the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
| 11 May 2026
Combined luminescence dating and ice-flow modelling to track Holocene sediment transport and storage in the Mer de Glace catchment, French Alps
Abstract. The storage and release of sediment from glacierised catchments is an important process in mountain landscape evolution, and yet sediment transport pathways and residence times within glaciers remain poorly constrained. We quantified headwall erosion rates and englacial sediment transport and storage times in the Mer de Glace catchment in the Mont Blanc massif, French Alps, during deglaciation through the Holocene (11.7 ka to present). Englacial sediment transport and storage times were constrained using luminescence rock surface burial ages of granitic clasts sampled along the central flow line of the Mer de Glace ablation area. We also used luminescence rock surface exposure dating and terrestrial cosmogenic nuclide (¹⁰Be) measurements to constrain headwall erosion rates for this catchment. These headwall erosion and sediment transport data were compared with simulated erosion, sediment trajectories and transport rates derived from the glacier model iSOSIA. Measured headwall erosion rates were ~0.1–5 mm a⁻¹ and are consistent with other estimates from the Mont Blanc massif. Luminescence rock surface burial ages ranged from ~0.6 to ~6.7 ka and clustered into distinct age populations at ~0.8 ka, ~1.5 ka, ~2.2 ka, and ~6.7 ka. The youngest age population is consistent with continuous englacial transport times predicted by the glacier modelling and observations of present-day glacier surface velocity, whereas the older age clusters indicate prolonged sediment storage within the catchment. Comparison of our results with results from Miage Glacier, Italian Alps, shows that long-term sediment storage with durations exceeding 1 ka is common in steep alpine glacierised catchments, despite high erosion rates and active ice flow. Luminescence burial ages indicate that sediment can be stored during periods of glacier minima, then released during more active phases. Glacierised catchments therefore act as millennial-scale sediment reservoirs, introducing time lags between sediment production and downstream transport, that modulate climatic signals recorded in proglacial stratigraphy during deglaciation.
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Status: open (until 09 Jul 2026)
- CC1: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1536', Melaine Le Roy, 03 Jun 2026 reply
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CC2: 'Comment on egusphere-2026-1536', Arbaz Pathan, 21 Jun 2026
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please find the comments in attached documents
Data sets
Site Petit Flambeau (Mont-Blanc Massif/French Alps, Mer de Glace) in ICE-D version 2 database Ann V. Rowan https://version2.ice-d.org/alpine/site/Petit%20Flambeau/
Luminescence measurements of englacial rocks and headwall bedrock samples from Mer de Glace (French Alps), with associated codes for luminescence rock surface burial dating. Léa Rodari, Audrey Margirier, Christoph Schmidt, and Georgina E. King https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.19081855
Model code and software
annvrowan/isosia: iSOSIA version used in Margirier et al. Ann V. Rowan and Vivi K. Pedersen https://zenodo.org/records/10959201
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- 1
Dear authors,
Congratulations on this new study examining the residence time of sediments in the Mer de Glace catchment since deglaciation. I found especially interesting the new evidence of long residence time dating back to the Holocene Thermal Maxima glacier retreat phases. Having worked on this site for a while, I would like to commend the authors on this briliant work and bring to their attention a few references that have been overlooked here.
As Mer de Glace is a key site in the history of glaciological science - and as you rightfully mentionned it at the Line 112 - a lot of historical observations have been carried out there. A reference like Nussbaumer et al (2007) might be worth citing here, as Mer de Glace is among the few glaciers in the world having such a detailed LIA chronology.
Moreover, you are mentionning and using Holzhauser et al (2005) to model Mer de Glace extent through the Common Era (Line 330). We would like to bring to your attention that a tree ring-derived glacier chronology spanning the same timespan as the Aletsch one does actually exist at Mer de Glace (Le Roy et al., 2015). Aletsch has a far longer response time than Mer de Glace, which may call into question the use of this curve here.
Finally, regarding the entire Holocene, there is also a TCN-derived moraine chronology developped at Talèfre Glacier, in the Mer de Glace catchment (Protin et al., 2021), which has actually dated the Younger Dryas to Holocene transition you are mentionning in the paper (e.g. at Line 320).
Please see some other comments and the mentionned references below.
Sicerely,
Melaine Le Roy
Detail points :
Line 121 : please correct ‘Echellets’ for ‘Échelets’, if you are talking here of the area surrounding the glaciological profile located around 1900 m. Location seems right from Fig. 1. Please correct name also on Fig. 1 then.
Line 134 : Why using ‘CE’ (Common Era) only here and not before/after, for the dates ? Better explain this abbreviation starting from Line 326.
Line 137 : Older photos than 1902 (up to half a century older actually) do exist at Mer de Glace to characterize the debris cover, which is the peculiarity of this site. So, why using this date (1902) here ? Please be specific.
Line 138 : The Mer de Glace front was no more ‘extending in the Chamonix Valley’ by 1902.
Line 311 : No references for the dating and mapping of these LIA and pre-LIA Mer de Glace moraines have been given in the paper (we propose Nussbaumer et al., 2007 and Le Roy et al., 2015). The Lüthi (2014) reference quoted here doesn’t present the original data.
Line 320 : Where do the dates you quote here come from (as no source is cited)? You present them as if they came from the Mer de Glace site, but that is not the case (even though there are dates at Mer de Glace, see Protin et al., 2021). If you maintain these dates please specify what is the corpus and the dating method here (associated to these uncertainties).
Line 322 : The references provided above about the Holocene history of Mer de Glace should be cited here. Additionnally, a new review paper about Holocene glacier variations in the Alps (including all the available dendro-dates, which are not present in Ivy-Ochs et al., 2009) has been published recently (Le Roy et al., 2024)
Line 330 : As explained above, there is a Neoglacial tree ring variation curve at Mer de Glace (Le Roy et al., 2015) comparable to the Aletsch curve. Please explain why not using it here.
Line 581 : We recently summarized all tree ring data indicating Holocene glacier retreats in the Alps (Le Roy et al., 2024). It would therefore be worthy to cite this reference here rather than references giving older radiocarbon dates.
Line 583 : I imagine the Roman Warm Period is cited here considering the uncertainties around your ages. Actually it was a rather shorth warm period (1-250 CE, see again our review - this is also evidenced in the temperature series shown in your Fig. 10C) and both periods you cited here (2.5 and 1.2 ka) rather fall into large glacier advance periods in the Alps, and not glacier retreats. Please be more cautious with the wording here.
Line 584 : The fact that the Roman Warm period triggered smaller-than-present glaciers is not evidenced at glacier tongues in the Alps. It is only based on dates of archaeological artefacts at high elevation passes, which are not free from cultural bias. In any case, the two references you cited here actually don’t support the claim made.
Line 592-593 : The Bohleber et al (2020) reference doesn’t refer to the Mer de Glace catchment, nor to higher frequency of rock avalanches. Please clarify.
Line 676 : Maybe a typo here ? Inversion of 1.2 and 2.5 ka (mentionned elsewhere) for 1.5 and 2.2 ka.
References cited
Le Roy, M., Nicolussi, K., Deline, P. ,Astrade, L., Edouard, J-L., Miramont, C., Arnaud, F., 2015. Calendar-dated glacier variations in the Western European Alps during the Neoglacial: the Mer de Glace record, Mont Blanc massif. Quaternary Science Reviews 108, 1-22, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.10.033
Le Roy, M., Ivy-Ochs, S., Nicolussi, K., Monegato, G., Reitner, J.M., Colucci, R.R., Ribolini, A., Spagnolo, M., Stoffel, M., 2024. Chapter 20 - Holocene glacier variations in the Alps. In: Palacios, D., Hughes, P.D., Jomelli, V., Tanarro, L.M. (Eds.) European Glacial Landscapes: The Holocene. Elsevier, Amsterdam. 367–418. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-323-99712-6.00018-0
Nussbaumer, S.U., Zumbühl, H.J., Steiner, D., 2007. Fluctuations of the Mer de Glace (Mont Blanc area, France) AD 1500-2050: an interdisciplinary approach using new historical data and neural network simulations. Zeitschrift für Gletscherkunde und Glazialgeologie 40, 1-183.
Protin M., Schimmelpfennig I., Mugnier J-L., Buoncristiani J-F., Le Roy M., Pohl B., Moreau L., ASTER Team, 2021. Millennial-scale synchronism of glacier fluctuations during the Younger Dryas / Early Holocene transition in the European Alps - new evidence from cosmogenic 10Be glacier chronologies in the Mont-Blanc massif (French Alps). Boreas, https://doi.org/10.1111/bor.12519