Towards successful OSL sampling strategies in glacial environments: deciphering the influence of depositional processes on bleaching of modern glacial sediments from Jostedalen, Southern Norway

The luminescence signals of both coarse-grained quartz and K-feldspar with similar sediment sources are found to be sensitive to both depositional process and specific depositional setting. Whereas modern braid-bar-head deposits from the Nigardsdalen ice-proximal proglacial delta typically have ages of ≤3 ka, similar depositional features from the Fåbergstølsgrandane sandur have residual ages of ≥26 ka. Exploration of changing residual luminescence signals across individual sandur and proglacial delta braid-bar features shows that braid-bar-head deposits can retain large residual De values, while the partner braid-bar-tail deposits are almost completely bleached. The quartz OSL signal and K-feldspar IRSL50 and post-IR IRSL250 signals are shown to bleach at the same rate across the same bar feature and the IRSL50 K-feldspar signal is also shown to be completely bleached for bar-tail deposits in Nigardsdalen. Therefore the IRSL50 K-feldspar signal is suitable for dating some glacial deposits, circumventing the challenges associated with dim quartz signals.