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Geochemical characteristics and provenance of aeolian sediments in the Yarlung Tsangpo valley, Southern Tibetan Plateau

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Abstract

Aeolian sediments and other surface deposits are widespread along the broad valleys across the Yarlung Tsangpo (YT) catchment on the southern Tibetan Plateau (TP) and are considered important sources of global dust. However, geochemical differentiation in different reaches, sedimentary circulation, and dust transmission processes in the YT valleys are poorly understood. In this study, 47 samples of different types of sediments were collected from different YT valleys, and the major and trace-element (excluding rare-earth elements, REEs) compositions of 42 bulk samples and the trace elements (including REEs) compositions for the fine (< 75 μm) fractions of 21 samples were determined. The results show that the different sediments are predominantly sourced from local felsic bedrocks, originating mainly from the Lhasa terrane through the tributary systems, which are primarily controlled by the physical weathering, and only incipient chemical weathering. The geochemical characteristics of the various sediment types exhibited spatial differentiation because of the complex structure and topography, intense surface circulation, and mixing processes of the detritus from both banks. Owing to the complexity of regional surface processes, conventional non-isotopic geochemical methods might not be the most effective tool for sediment provenance tracing on a large spatial scale. Nevertheless, aeolian deposits in the broad valleys across YT mainly have a near-source clastic supply of local origins, belonging to a regional self-cycling process, which might not be transported by wind across different reaches because of high topographic obstacles.

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source rocks of the sediments of the Yarlung Tsangpo (YT) catchment. The mixing curve in a connecting a granite end member to an ultramafic end member is derived from Amorosi et al. (2002), and the percentages listed in the plot are the percentage of ultramafic components in the samples. The trend arrows in b are according to McLennan et al. (1993) and Hu and Yang, (2016)

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Acknowledgements

This research was financially supported by the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research Program (STEP) (Grant nos. 2019QZKK0602 and 2019QZKK0805), National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. U20A2088), Key Deployment Projects of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant no. ZDRW-ZS-2020-3), and the Qinghai Provincial Science and Technology Innovation Platform (Grant no. 2020-ZJ-T03).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Comprehensive and Highly Efficient Utilization of Salt Lake Resources, Qinghai Provincial Key Laboratory of Geology and Environment of Salt Lakes, Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining, 810008, China

    Zhiyong Ling, Jiansen Li, Jianping Wang, Fancui Kong & Liang Chen

  2. Key Laboratory of West China’s Environmental Systems (Ministry of Education), College of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    Zhiyong Ling

  3. Institute of Geography, Key Laboratory for Humid Subtropical Eco-Geographical Processes (Ministry of Education), Fujian Normal University, Fuzhou, 350007, China

    Jianhui Jin

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  1. Zhiyong Ling
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Ling, Z., Li, J., Jin, J. et al. Geochemical characteristics and provenance of aeolian sediments in the Yarlung Tsangpo valley, Southern Tibetan Plateau. Environ Earth Sci 80, 623 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-021-09928-5

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