Radiocarbon concentration of lake sediment cellulose from Lake Erhai in southwest China

Thursday, 8 September 2005

This presentation is part of: Poster Session II

Radiocarbon concentration of lake sediment cellulose from Lake Erhai in southwest China

Hiroyuki Kitagawa¹, Hiroyuki Matsuzaki², Shafi M. Tareq¹, Nobuo Inoue¹, Eiichiro Tanoue¹, and Yoshinori Yasuda³. (1) Graduate School of Environmental Studies, Nagoya University, Nagoya, 464-8601, Japan, (2) Micro Analysis Laboratory, Tandem accelerator, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113-0032, Japan, (3) International Research Center for Japanese studies, Kyoto, 610-1192, Japan

Oxygen isotope (δ¹⁸O) of lake sediment cellulose has been used as a tracer for investigating paleohydrologic and paleoclimatic changes. A fundamental assumption in the interpretation of δ¹⁸O data from lake sediment cellulose is that the fine-grained cellulose fraction in offshore lake sediments is derived from aquatic plants/algae. To examine this assumption and assess the origin of lake sediment cellulose, ¹⁴C and δ¹³C of lake sediment celluloses as well as δ¹³C, C/N ratio and lignin phenol index of total organic carbon from a 10-m long sediment of Lake Erhai, where is located on the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, were determined. We conclude that the careful assessments for characterization of lake sediment cellulose make it possible to reconstruct quantitatively the climatic and hydrologic changes from δ¹⁸O records of lake sediment cellulose. In addition, we suggest that the ¹⁴C ages of lake sediment cellulose may be potentially useful complement for evaluating the chronology of the sediment core from Lake Elhai.

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