Applications of accelerator mass spectrometry in geoscience

For ten years the accelerator mass spectrometry of 14C and 10Be has been developing rapidly. It has been proved to be a successful new experimental method. It has attracted scholars with interests ranging from the time variation of cosmic rays to the evolution of soils. 10Be has a high atmospheric production rate and a low abundance of the stable isotope. The measurement of 10Be in the environment has been applied to research on the atmosphere, the cosmic-ray history found in Arctic ice, Pelagic sediments, the evolution of loess and its erosion, the formation of continental margins and the nature of island-arc volcanism. A brief review is given in this paper