CLOSURE, AGE2EDOT, and RESPTIME
June 24, 2007
Programs here (1.4 Mb)

INTRODUCTION
CLOSURE, AGE2EDOT, and RESPTIME are a set of simple programs that were first developed in Brandon et al. (1998). They were designed to help demonstrate the influence of steady and transient erosion on fission-track (FT) cooling ages. The programs have since been extended to include (U-Th)/He and 40Ar/39Ar ages, as well as FT ages. The programs now include modern diffusion data for all of the minerals commonly dated for thermochronometry, ranging from He dating of apatite to Ar dating of hornblende.

CLOSURE is a standard Windows-style program, whereas AGE2EDOT and RESPTIME are console-style programs. All of the programs are compiled for the Windows operating system. Each consists of a single exe file. Setup involves copying the file into a suitable directory. Note that the directories in the path for the AGE2EDOT and RESPTIME programs must have names that are no longer than 8 characters in length. These programs will not run if the directory names fail this specification. The programs are started by double-clicking the file name. The programs require no input files. Rather, the user is guided by a set of prompts and questions to supply the necessary input parameters for the calculation of interest. Results are output to a window for CLOSURE and to an output file for AGE2EDOT and RESPTIME.

In all cases, the output is organized with tab-separated columns, so that it can be easily imported into a plotting program, such as EXCEL, Matlab, or SIGMAPLOT. The source code for the programs is available on request. DISTRIBUTION Files included in this distribution are:
Documentation.pdf Explanation of programs, including methods used, source of data, etc. Closure.exe Stand-alone windows-style program (error corrected, June, 2007)
Age2Edot.exe Stand-alone console-style program
RespTime.exe Stand-alone console-style program
Age2Edot.output Sample output file
Resptime.output Sample output file

REFERENCE
Brandon, M. T., Roden-Tice, M. K., and Garver, J. I., 1998, Late Cenozoic exhumation of the Cascadia accretionary wedge in the Olympic Mountains, northwest Washington State: Geological Society of America Bulletin, v. 110, p. 985-1009.

Ehlers, T., Chaudhri, T., Kumar, S., Fuller, C., Willett, S., Ketcham, R. A., Brandon, M. T., Belton, D. X., Kohn, B. P., Gleadow, A. J. W., Dunai, T. J., and Fu, F. Q., 2005, Computational tools for low-temperature thermochronometer interpretation, in Reiners, P., and Ehlers, T., editors, Low-Temperature Thermochronology: Techniques, Interpretations, Applications: Reviews in Mineralogy and Geochemistry: Chantilly, VA, Mineralogical Society of America, Geochemical Society, p. 589-622.

Reiners, P. W., and Brandon Mark, T., 2006, Using thermochronology to understand orogenic erosion: Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences, v. 34, p. 419–66, doi: 10.1146/annurev.earth.34.031405.125202.

Mark T. Brandon Department of Geology and Geophysics Yale University P.O. Box 208109 New Haven, CT 06520-8109