Late Miocene – Recent exhumation of the central Himalaya and recycling in the foreland basin assessed by apatite fission-track thermochronology of Siwalik sediments, Nepal

Thermochronological analysis of detrital sediments derived from the erosion of mountain belts and contained in the sedimentary basins surrounding them allows reconstructing the long-term exhumation history of the sediment source areas. The effective closure temperature of the thermochronological system analysed determines the spatial and temporal resolution of the analysis through the duration of the lag time between closure of the system during exhumation and its deposition in the sedimentary basin. Here, we report apatite fission-track (AFT) data from 31 detrital samples collected from Miocene to Pliocene stratigraphic sections of the Siwalik Group in western and central Nepal, as well as three samples from modern river sediments from the same area, that complement detrital zircon fission-track (ZFT) and U–Pb data from the same samples presented in a companion paper. Samples from the upper part of the stratigraphic sections are unreset and retain a signal of source-area exhumation; they show spatial variations in source-area exhumation rates that are not picked up by the higher-temperature systems. More deeply buried samples have been partially reset within the Siwalik basin and provide constraints on the thermal and kinematic history of the fold-and-thrust belt itself. The results suggest that peak source-area exhumation rates have been constant at ∼1.8 km Myr⁻¹ over the last ∼7 Ma in central Nepal, whereas they ranged between 1 and ∼1.5 km Myr⁻¹ in western Nepal over the same time interval; these spatial variations may be explained by either a tectonic or climatic control on exhumation rates, or possibly a combination of the two. Increasing lag times within the uppermost part of the sections suggest an increasing component of apatites that have been recycled within the Siwalik belt and are corroborated by AFT ages of modern river sediment downstream as well as the record of the distal Bengal Fan. The most deeply buried and most strongly annealed samples record onset of exhumation of the frontal Siwaliks along the Himalayan frontal thrust at ∼2 Ma and continuous shortening at rates comparable with the present-day shortening rates from at least 0.3 Ma onward.