Climate and Environmental Change

Cold events of Holocene indicated by primary elements distribution of the high-resolution sand dunes in the Salawusu River Valley

Expand
  • 1. School of Geography, South China Normal University, Guangzhou 510631, China|
    2. State Key Laboratory of Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi’an 710061, China|
    3. Baotou Vocational &|Technical College, Baotou 010022, China

Received date: 2007-10-04

  Revised date: 2007-11-26

  Online published: 2008-02-25

Supported by

National Basic Research Program of China, No.2004CB720206; National Natural Science Foundation of China, No.40772118; No.49971009; Knowledge Innovation Project of CAS, No.KZCX2-SW-118

Abstract

The components of the primary elements in the dune sands for the MGS1 subsec-tion of the Milanggouwan section in the Salawusu River valley, compared with those of mod-ern dune sands, show that they were caused by East Asian winter monsoon in the Mu Us desert during Holocene. The examined ages for the 11 layers of dune sands, based on the average sedimentary rate, are: 0 to 960, 1350–2240, 2470 to 3530, 4000 to 4180, 4290 to 4350, 4380 to 4760, 5040 to 5920, 6570 to 8270, 9020 to 9700, 9880 to 10160 and 10580 to 11080 a BP, respectively. The climatic events indicated by these dune sands are consistent with those records in the Huguangyan volcanic lake, Zoige peat bog, Hulu cave and Dunde ice core, particularly with the climatic fluctuations of the North Atlantic since 11 000 a BP. Among them, patterns from B0 to B8 correspond to the peak values of 0MD, 2D, 4D, 6D+8D+10D, 12D, 14D, 16D, 18D and 20D respectively. It might be caused by the North Atlantic ice age induced by the heat circulation, which strengthened the polar high pressure and Siberian-Mongolian high pressure and further led to the dominance of the winter mon-soon over China’s desert area.

Cite this article

NIU Dongfeng, LI Baosheng, DU Shuhuan, WEN Xiaohao, QIU Shifan, OU Xianjiao, YANG Yi . Cold events of Holocene indicated by primary elements distribution of the high-resolution sand dunes in the Salawusu River Valley[J]. Journal of Geographical Sciences, 2008 , 18(1) : 26 -36 . DOI: 10.1007/s11442-008-0026-4

Outlines

/