Australian continental‐scale heavy mineral patterns track climate, weathering and erosion

ABSTRACT The heavy mineral cargo of sediment is influenced by a complex and variable overprint of climate and environmental processes acting on weathered crystalline basement sources. Here, a continental‐scale heavy mineral compositional dataset of 1315 surface sediment samples, analysed via automated mineralogy, from across Australia is utilized to differentiate between primary source signals and secondary, weathering‐related and transport‐related sediment modification. The results show that heavy mineral patterns not only retain provenance information from the underlying crystalline basement but also have imprinted apparent relationships to measurements of climatic and environmental conditions. Sediment properties change from source to sink and indicate that sediment storage duration considerably influences mineral composition, progressively overprinting primary source information over hundreds of thousands of years. These findings offer a quantitative means to assess and spatially evaluate palaeo‐weathering intensity within ancient landscapes, estimate information loss, and enhance interpretation of the detrital record.