Sediment budget and tectonic evolution of the Meuse catchment in the Ardennes and the Roer Valley Rift System

The Meuse river system is located in the northeastern part of the Paris Bas in, the Ardennes, and the Roer Valley Rift System (RVRS). The Meuse river s ystem developed during the uplift of the Ardennes since the Eocene and it w as affected by renewed rifting of the RVRS starting in the Late Oligocene. In response to the uplift of the Ardennes, the river system incised and a t errace sequence developed during the Plio-Pleistocene. The sediments genera ted by erosion in the catchment were transported into the RVRS and further to the north, into the Zuiderzee Basin and the North Sea Basin. Using a dig ital terrain model, the amount of eroded rock volume versus time for the Me use catchment has been computed using the Paleogene and older planation sur faces and the fluvial terraces. Comparison of the amount of eroded material with the volume of sediment preserved in the RVRS for the early Middle Ple istocene shows that about 17.5% of the sediment volume transported into the RVRS remained there, the rest being transported further into the Zuiderzee Basin and the North Sea Basin. The Quaternary tectonic uplift of the Arden nes inferred from the incision history of the Meuse river system is charact erized by a long-term uplift, on which a Middle Pleistocene acceleration is superimposed. The accelerated uplift is contemporaneous with an uplift eve nt in the RVRS and in the neighbouring Eifel area, and with the onset of th e youngest phase of volcanism in the Eifel area. The areal distribution of this uplift is characterized by a dome shape centered around the Eifel area . (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.