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An n-alkane and carbon isotope record during the last deglaciation from annually laminated sediment in Lake Xiaolongwan, northeastern China

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Abstract

The last deglaciation is of great interest because Northern Hemisphere climate has gone through several abrupt changes. We present an n-alkane and compound-specific carbon isotope record of the last deglaciation from the annually laminated sedimentary sequence of Lake Xiaolongwan, northeastern China. The n-alkane distribution suggests that the sparsely distributed vegetation prior to 14.7 ka BP, changed to wood plants and aquatic macrophytes in the early Bølling-Allerød, and was followed by a broadleaved deciduous forest after 11.4 ka BP. In this forest region, where the vegetation is dominated by C3 plants, the compound-specific δ13C value of the long-chain n-alkanes (nC27, nC29 and nC31) is interpreted as a proxy of effective precipitation, while temperature might play a minor secondary role. The positive δ13C27–31 values during the Bølling-Allerød suggest a dry-warm climatic condition, while the negative δ13C27–31 at 13.0–11.4 ka BP indicates a cold-wet climate during the Younger Dryas in this region. Two periods with lower δ13C27–31 occurred at 16.1–16.5 and 17.3–17.7 ka BP and could be associated with the Heinrich event-1a and the Heinrich event-1b, respectively. The synchroneity between the biomarker time series in Lake Xiaolongwan and the δ18O record from the Greenland ice core suggest the dominance of high latitude processes on regional monsoon evolution from the last glacial, the Bølling-Allerød, the Younger Dryas to early Holocene. Regionally, the Okhotsk High might have played an important role for abrupt changes during the glacial/interglacial transition.

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Melanie Leng and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments that improved the quality of this manuscript. This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 41272198, 41371219, 40977120), and the China Geological Survey (Grant no. 12120113005600).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. National Research Center of Geoanalysis, Beijing, 100037, China

    Qing Sun, Manman Xie, Yuan Lin, Yabing Shan & Qingzeng Zhu

  2. Key Laboratory of Cenozoic Geology and Environment, Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100029, China

    Deke Xu, Youliang Su, Patrick Rioual & Guoqiang Chu

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Supplementary material 1

Supplementary figure 1 shows the slump structure and an AMS14C anchored point in the varved sequence. (PDF 884 kb)

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Sun, Q., Xie, M., Lin, Y. et al. An n-alkane and carbon isotope record during the last deglaciation from annually laminated sediment in Lake Xiaolongwan, northeastern China. J Paleolimnol 56, 189–203 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10933-016-9904-4

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