Loess, and the Dust Indicators and Records of Terrestrial and Marine Palaeoenvironments (DIRTMAP) database

doi:10.1016/S0277-3791(03)00209-9

Quaternary Science Reviews

Volume 22, Issues 18–19, September 2003, Pages 1813-1819

https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-3791(03)00209-9 Get rights and content

Abstract

Mineral dust is an important constituent of the solid load in Earth's atmosphere, the total atmospheric aerosol loading being both a function of, and a factor affecting climatic change. Human actions have progressively enhanced atmospheric dust loading, especially in the past century, so that both natural and human-induced effects of atmospheric dust on climatic change require more detailed research. Records of changing climate are preserved in cores from the ocean floors, glaciers and ice sheets, as well as in terrestrial sedimentary sections. Quantitative data on the present-day distribution of atmospheric dust are sparse, but simulation of dust transport and deposition has been modelled with some success. The dust indicators and records of terrestrial and marine palaeoenvironments (DIRTMAP) database was designed to serve as a global validation data set for use with earth system models of the palaeo-dust cycle. Loess, a wind-borne silt deposited on the continents particularly in the past 2.6 Myr, is an important potential source of information on past atmospheric dust accumulation. A recent initiative sought to improve the terrestrial data coverage within the existing DIRTMAP database by involving representatives from key loess regions in coordinating the data synthesis process, so as to facilitate interaction between the dust modelling and the data collection communities. The results are presented in this issue. In order to compare past minerogenic dust records (loess) with those in ice and ocean cores, mass accumulation rates (MARs) have been calculated as fluxes (in g/m²/yr). The loess regions covered include North and South America, Europe, Siberia, eastern Asia, and Australasia. It is acknowledged that provision of age models for the calculation of realistic MAR values depends upon a number of conditions, most notably sound chronostratigraphy and realistic values of loess dry bulk densities. The MAR data sets presented here show some notable variation, both within and between the studied regions. Regional MAR coverage also varies, reflecting differences in the availability of key data on loess from one world region to another. Loess facies vary according to specific site and source conditions, as well as in response to post-depositional re-working of primary (wind-lain) loess by surface geomorphic processes. Mean particle size consistently declines downwind, and terrace, valley and upland sites generally yield the highest MAR values, characteristics noted in all regions discussed here. The loess accumulations in two major world regions, central and eastern Asia and the Great Plains region of North America, differ in some important respects from loess elsewhere in that they lie peripheral to deserts and are remote from the former sites of major Quaternary ice sheets. It is concluded that the MARs for terrestrial sites obtained from loess are consistently higher than those obtained from ocean and ice cores, so that future climatic models designed to study the role of global atmospheric dust will have to take full account of the present and past dust records over the continents.

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Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks are due to the following colleagues for their careful and constructive reviewing of the set of papers presented here: Rick Arimoto, Yves Balkanski, Alan Busacca, John Catt, Mike Dodson, Mary Edwards, Ted Evans, David Heslop, Rob Kemp, Olav Liam, Barbara Maher, Matt McGlone, Dan Muhs, Geoff Seltzer, Ian Smalley, Scott Smith, Phil Tonkin and Ann Wintle. I am also indebted to Xingmin Meng and Jenny Kynaston, both of the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of

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As air masses move downwind from regions of dust provenance, deposition and subsequent resuspension are common where the deposited dust is subject to being entrained by wind (Arimoto et al., 2005; Laidlaw and Filippelli, 2008). If, however, deposited dust is protected from re-entrainment, it will accumulate over time and provide a record of atmospheric particulate loading and chemistry since the creation of the depositional environment, as observed geologically in marine sediments, loess deposits, and ice (Derbyshire, 2003). Over timescales and locations associated with human settlement, attics provide ideal protected depositional environments for dust.
Heavy metal contamination in the environment is detrimental to human and environmental health. Air emissions from industry, especially ore smelting and refining, are a source of heavy metal contamination that affects land and populations downwind. A smelter constructed in 1887 in El Paso, Texas, USA and later decommissioned in 1999 resulted in significant environmental contamination and subsequent remediation of nearby neighborhoods. We sampled dust accumulated in attics from two distinct neighborhoods different distances and topographic positions downwind from the smelter site to determine if we could detect metal-bearing particulates related to smelter emissions and to evaluate potential spatial and temporal patterns of deposition. Both neighborhoods showed evidence of accumulation of smelter-related particulates the depositional environment of vented attics. The proportion of smelter-associated elements in attic dust from the neighborhood nearer the smelter was greater than the neighborhood further away and across a ridge. A temporal pattern of deposition defined by the construction of a 252 m tall smokestack in 1967 and other engineering controls significantly reduced the deposition of smelter particulates in both neighborhoods. However, we found the reduction effect was more significant in the neighborhood nearer the smelter, once again demonstrating the spatial effect of distance from source.
A critical reevaluation of palaeoclimate proxy records from loess in the Carpathian Basin
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Consequently, it represents a valuable palaeoclimate archive, especially important for reliable reconstructions of palaeowind and past atmospheric systems evolution (Hao et al., 2012; Obreht et al., 2016, 2017; Stevens and Lu, 2009; Stevens et al., 2011). Moreover, loess deposits preserve important information on past atmospheric dust dynamics (Derbyshire, 2003; Muhs et al., 2014; Újvári et al., 2015, 2017), and apparently react to global climate forcing. After deposition, loess undergoes a unique process called loessification, a still poorly understood process that is associated with simultaneous weak influences of diagenesis and pedogenesis (Sprafke and Obreht, 2016).
In the Carpathian Basin, loess is the most important archive of Quaternary palaeoclimate evolution, but only in the past two decades systematic and high-resolution investigations were conducted. Those studies remarkably improved our knowledge of the regional past environmental change; palaeoclimate inferences based on the magnetic susceptibility and grain-size distribution, as the most commonly used palaeoenvironmental proxies for the Carpathian Basin loess, indicate colder and drier climatic conditions during glacials when compared to interglacials. With an increasing number of studies using novel proxies in loess research, such a traditional understanding of dry and cold glacials and humid and warm interglacials in the Carpathian Basin has been questioned. As an illustrative example, mollusc-based climate reconstructions suggest generally warm and very dry summer conditions with mean July temperatures up to 21 °C for the southern Carpathian Basin during the last glacial. Results based on stable carbon isotopes strongly oppose such high summer temperatures, but studies based on n-alkanes are in general agreement with the mollusc data when it comes to the vegetation reconstruction indicating mostly steppic conditions. However, n-alkanes studies contradict warm and dry glacial conditions as indicated by mollusc-based reconstructions, pointing instead to cold and relatively humid glacials. In addition, there is an ongoing debate whether or not millennial-scale climatic oscillations can be observed in the Carpathian Basin loess, as well as whether this area was an important Northern Hemisphere dust source or rather a sink of far distance dust transport. Consequently, the current state of the art of the palaeoclimate reconstructions from loess in the Carpathian Basin is rather inconsistent.
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High-resolution paleoclimatic proxy data from the MIS3/2 transition recorded in northeastern Hungarian loess
2019, Quaternary International
Citation Excerpt :
Loess-paleosol sequences have the ability to preserve past environmental and climatic conditions (e.g. Buggle et al., 2013; Derbyshire, 2003; Evans and Heller, 2001; Guo et al., 2002; Heller and Liu, 1984; Krauß et al., 2016; Kukla, 1977; Kukla et al., 1988; Obreht et al., 2016, 2017; Smalley and Vita-Finzi, 1968; Smalley and Leach, 1978; Zeeden et al., 2016b).
The Bodrogkeresztúr loess-paleosol sequence in northeastern Hungary was investigated to improve our understanding of the paleoenvironmental conditions at the foothills of the Carpathians and their impact on the Gravettian population. The main part of the section is comprised of eolian deposits that enable the reconstruction of the paleoenvironmental conditions. This study comprises grain size, geochemical, color and rock magnetic analysis, as well as luminescence and radiocarbon dating. The chronological data place this section from later MIS 3 until present, but also suggest erosion of the sediment in the late MIS 2 and the (early) Holocene. Moreover, generally more humid conditions during late MIS3 and early MIS2 are observed, in comparison to other regions in the Carpathian Basin. Main dust source was most likely the Tisza floodplain, and the material was probably transported to the site from a northeastern wind direction. Increased weathering led to the formation of a well-developed MIS3 paleosol. The loess exhibits elevated values of frequency dependent magnetic susceptibility that highlight the relatively mild conditions during loess formation. Nevertheless, two loess layers with high sand abundance in the profile indicate colder and dryer conditions with increased eolian dynamics during short periods within MIS2. Finally, the Bodrogkeresztúr section highlights the unique microclimatic conditions at the foothill areas of the Carpathian Basin, which may have offered a favorable environment for the Gravettian population.
Loess: Rock, sediment or soil - What is missing for its definition?
2016, Quaternary International
Citation Excerpt :
There are also late Palaeozoic loess deposits of equatorial Pangaea (Soreghan et al., 2008) and Precambrian loessites in northern Norway (Edwards, 1979) – however altered by significant diagenesis. Loess sediments, mainly composed of windblown particles, are key palaeoclimatic archives, recording past global atmospheric mineral dust dynamics and palaeoenvironmental changes (Kohfeld and Harrison, 2001; Derbyshire, 2003; Muhs et al., 2014). LPS illustrate the changes in Quaternary palaeoenvironments on millennial and larger time scales (Rousseau et al., 2002; Bronger, 2003; Antoine et al., 2009, 2013; Buggle et al., 2013).
Loess is commonly defined as an accumulation of windblown silt. However, the complex mechanisms that are responsible for most of the structural characteristics of loess require a more precise explanation. The common definition of loess ignores a set of processes that start during and after the subaerial deposition of silt. The term loessification has been used by a number of authors to refer to the quasi-pedogenic/quasi-diagenetic processes that result in the typical aggregation of loess; however these mechanisms are rarely described in detail. Depending on the researcher's background, loess is classified as sediment, soil or rock.
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Glacial erosion and sediment production are of interest to diverse scientific communities concerned with the interaction of climatic, tectonic and surface processes that influence the evolution of orogens and with the climatic signals archived in glacigenic strata. We review the current state of knowledge on the generation, transfer, and accumulation of glacigenic sediment from land to sea. We draw from geomorphology, marine geology, geochronology, numerical modeling of surface processes and landscape evolution, and experimental and field observations of glacier erosion and deposition, and the interaction of ice with its bed and the ocean boundary. Our primary goal is to examine glacial systems using a holistic source-to-sink approach, with a focus on describing a) how glacial motion produces sediment, b) how the sediments (sink) record the dynamic nature of glacial systems under different climatic (thermal) regimes, c) the challenges in using the sedimentary record to interpret these dynamics in space and time, and d) the approaches still needed to further our understanding of how ice and associated sediment fluxes respond to climatic and other perturbations. The dynamic state of ice, i.e., the ice flux and ice extent, is defined differently between the source and sink communities, reflecting the challenges of establishing a stratigraphic signal that volumetrically constrains glacigenic sediment production as a function of the ice response to climate. Advances in marine geophysics have greatly assisted our understanding of mass transfer pathways and of former ice extents as a measure of ice dynamics, and have identified the primary depocenters and key lithofacies of glacial sinks. Sediment fluxes associated with the dynamic state of the ice are best constrained where sediment volumes derived from key lithofacies and seismic reflection isopachs can be temporally partitioned, of which there are few examples, rather than from discrete point measures of sediment flux that are subject to sediment transfer biases. Forward numerical modeling of sediment fluxes as a function of ice dynamics agree with observational data at the continental-margin scale, but finer time/space scale ice-dynamic models do not yet recreate observed ice extent or flowpaths. Future source-to-sink work in glaciated systems should focus on refining empirical relationships between ice velocity and sediment production, and expand the application of existing methods to develop sediment volumes and fluxes in known depocenters of former and modern ice streams.
Mass accumulation rate changes in Chinese loess during MIS 2, and asynchrony with records from Greenland ice cores and North Pacific Ocean sediments during the Last Glacial Maximum
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Sensitivity-corrected quartz optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating methods have been widely accepted as a promising tool for the construction of late Pleistocene chronology and mass or dust accumulation rates (MARs or DARs) on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP). Many quartz OSL ages covering marine isotope stage (MIS) 2 (equal to L_1-1 in Chinese loess) have been determined for individual sites within the CLP in the past decade. However, there is still a lack of detailed MAR or DAR reconstruction during MIS 2 across the whole of the CLP. Here, we present detailed MARs determined for eight sites with closely-spaced quartz OSL ages covering ∼MIS 2, and relative MARs suggested by a probability density analysis of 159 quartz OSL ages ranging from ∼30 to 10 ka ago, from 15 sites on the CLP. The results show enhanced dust accumulation during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), with particularly rapid dust accumulation from ∼23 to 19 ka ago (the late LGM). In contrast, MARs determined for the last deglaciation (from ∼19 to 12 ka ago) are low. The MAR changes during MIS 2 in Chinese loess are mainly controlled by the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM) intensity, which is forced by Northern Hemisphere ice volume. The MAR changes also indicate that dust accumulation during MIS 2 is generally continuous at millennial time scales on the CLP. Comparison of Asian-sourced aeolian dust MARs in Chinese loess with those preserved in Greenland ice cores and North Pacific Ocean sediments indicates that rapid dust accumulation occurred from ∼26 to 23 ka ago (the early LGM) in Greenland ice cores and North Pacific Ocean sediments, suggesting a several kilo-year difference in timing when compared with the rapid dust accumulation during the late LGM in Chinese loess. This asynchronous timing in enhanced dust accumulation is probably related to both changes in the EAWM intensity and changes in the mean position of zone axis of the Westerly jet, both of which are greatly influenced by Northern Hemisphere ice volume. This study highlights the possible influence of changes in the mean position of zone axis of the Westerly jet on long-range transport of Asian-sourced dust.

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Loess, and the Dust Indicators and Records of Terrestrial and Marine Palaeoenvironments (DIRTMAP) database

Abstract

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Acknowledgements

Quaternary Research

Earth Science Reviews

Quaternary Science Reviews

Quaternary Research

Earth Science Reviews

Earth-Science Reviews

Earth and Planetary Science Letters

Quaternary International

Quaternary Science Reviews

Earth-Science Reviews

Quaternary Research