Pilot study for the geochemical characterisation of loess-palaeosoil sequences: the project S³

黄土-古土壤序列(LPSS)是欧洲独特的气候条件自然档案。它们的沉积记录提供了有关风条件和土壤形成过程等方面的信息。然而，到目前为止，与湖泊和海洋沉积记录不同的是，LPSSS的高分辨率地球化学分析很少发表。在这项研究(S项目)中，将用iTrax XRF岩心扫描仪分析来自三个不同欧洲LPSs(德国中莱茵河流域的Schwalbenberg II、匈牙利多瑙河的SüTTö、克罗地亚亚得里亚海北部的Susak)的干燥和地面样品。为了增加元素比的解释能力，将提供额外的CNS分析，并将参考其他已公布的数据。这项初步研究的目的是将常规获得的数据与XRF岩心扫描仪提供的地球化学信息进行比较，并调查从海洋和湖泊沉积物中已知的元素比率的解释是否可以转移到风成沉积上。将这种全新的方法应用于LPSS的解释可能会导致后续项目，重点是利用XRF岩心扫描的全部潜力来分析以黄土为主的景观中的连续沉积物岩芯。这种非破坏性的方法将具有高达200微米的高空间分辨率。因此，来自LPSS的信息的时间分辨率将提高几个数量级，从而可以获得中更新世和晚更新世的高分辨率陆地气候和环境参数。

Loess-palaeosoil sequences (LPSS) are unique natural archives of climatic conditions in Europe. Their sedimentary records provide information about wind conditions and processes of soil formation amongst others. However, until today and different to lacustrine and marine sedimentary records high-resolution geochemical analyses of LPSS have rarely been published. For this study (the project S³) dried and ground samples from three different European LPSS (Schwalbenberg II at the Middle-Rhine valley in Germany, Süttö at the river Danube in Hungary, Susak located in the northern Adriatic Sea in Croatia) will be analysed for their elemental composition with the ITRAX XRF core-scanner. To increase the explanatory power of elemental ratios, additional CNS analyses will be provided and other published data will be consulted. It is the aim of this pilot study to compare conventionally obtained data with geochemical information provided by the XRF core-scanner and to investigate whether interpretations of elemental ratios known from marine and lacustrine sediments can be transferred to aeolian deposits. This completely new methodological approach applied to the interpretation of LPSS could lead to a follow-up project focussing on using the entire potential of XRF core-scanning for the analysis of continuous sediment cores from loess dominated landscapes. This non-destructive method would have a high spatial resolution of up to 200 µm. Thus, the temporal resolution of information from LPSS will be increased by several orders of magnitude, which makes available high-resolution terrestrial climatic and environmental parameters for the Middle- and Late-Pleistocene.