1996A&A...311..951F

We present observations of the LiI 6707.8 Angstroems line in a volume limited sample of main sequence stars of spectral types ranging from late F down to M0, selected from the Gliese catalog of nearby stars, discussing the behavior of lithium abundance along the main sequence. An unexpected result from our survey is that a low but measurable abundance of surface lithium (-0.5<N(Li)←1.0) is found to be a common feature in the cooler dwarfs in our sample. Possible explanations for the widespread presence of lithium in very cool dwarfs are discussed, with emphasis on the possibility of lithium being produced in stellar flares. We also discuss the feasibility of using kinematic age indicators for studying the lithium-age relationship, and show that surface lithium is found to be essentially uncorrelated with kinematic age indicators for the dwarfs in our sample.