0000000001310612
AUTHOR
Klemens Seelos
Plio-Pleistocene Dust Traps on Paleokarst Surfaces: A Case Study From the Carpathian Basin
Plio-Pleistocene silt/clay-rich deposits and paleo-karst fissure sediments from sites of the northern and southern parts of the Carpathian Basin were investigated. These materials were supposed to be mixed during transport before being captured in karstified fissures. Evidence that the eolian fissure sediments of Plio-Pleistocene age in the older Triassic–Cretaceous limestones are derived from eolian silt and clay includes compositional and textural matches, especially decreasing grain-size trends observed downwards from the paleo-surface of the former landscape. Various environmental factors could be recognized by the statistical evaluation of grain-size distribution curves of fissure fill…
RADIUS - rapid particle analysis of digital images by ultra-high-resolution scanning of thin sections
RADIUS is a newly developed particle-size measurement technique, based on evaluation of digital images of thin sections. Analyses are performed with sub-millimetre sample resolution and are thus designed to work on a single lamina of laminated sediments. The method covers grain sizes from medium silt to coarse sand. The application contains pattern-recognition modules that allow the detection of typical particle distributions of loess, organic detritus, turbidites and tephra layers. Cutting and hiding effects of particles on thin sections are corrected by empirical correction matrices. The calculated analysis results are compared with manually counted and measured samples to calibrate the a…
Seasonal changes in glacial polynya activity inferred from Weddell Sea varves
Abstract. The Weddell Sea and the associated Filchner–Rønne Ice Shelf constitute key regions for global bottom-water production today. However, little is known about bottom-water production under different climate and ice-sheet conditions. Therefore, we studied core PS1795, which consists primarily of fine-grained siliciclastic varves that were deposited on contourite ridges in the southeastern Weddell Sea during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). We conducted high-resolution X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis and grain-size measurements with the RADIUS tool (Seelos and Sirocko, 2005) using thin sections to characterize the two seasonal components of the varves at sub-mm resolution to distingui…
A late Eemian aridity pulse in central Europe during the last glacial inception
How do ice ages begin? It's an obvious question to ask as we enjoy the relative luxury of an interglacial, but a hard one to answer. A look at past transitions may give some clues as to how this period will one day come to an end. A climate reconstruction based on sediments found beneath a lake in the Eifel mountains in Germany provides evidence of an extreme climate event lasting 468 years right at the end of the last interglacial. Dust storms, aridity, bushfires and the loss of trees associated with a warm climate coincided with a southward shift of the warm waters of the North Atlantic drift. In terms of insolation — the rate of delivery of the Sun's radiation to Earth — conditions then …
A continuous high-resolution dust record for the reconstruction of wind systems in central Europe (Eifel, Western Germany) over the past 133 ka
[1] The last glacial cycle in Central Europe is dominated by processes of aeolian dust transport and accumulation. These dust deposits are preserved in soils and lake sediments and provide detailed information about the climate variability during cold and dry periods. Especially the transitions from warm into cold periods are characterized by turbulent climate conditions. The main problems of terrestrial paleoclimate reconstructions are the completeness of the core material and a sampling resolution. To detect single dust storms we use a particle detection method, which allows high resolution, sub-annual analyses of sediment structures in undisturbed samples. The ELSA (Eifel Laminated Sedim…
A new windstorm proxy from lake sediments: A comparison of geological and meteorological data from western Germany for the period 1965–2001
[1] The feasibility of detecting windstorm layers in lake sediments is explored by comparing quartz grain size data from a freeze core obtained from the Schalkenmehrener Maar (Eifel region, western Germany) to recent meteorological wind data. The Schalkenmehrener Maar is appropriate for such a calibration study because the morphological settings of the lake allow the conservation of windstorm layers (in particular, there is no fluvial sediment inflow) and long-term wind measurements are available from nearby stations. The age model for the uppermost 30 cm of the sediment core is based on measurements of 137Cs and 210Pb concentrations. An ultra-high-resolution grain size analysis is performe…
Eolian sedimentation in central European Auel dry maar from 60 to 13 ka
AbstractThe climate in central Europe during the last 60 ka is characterized by rapid temperature and moisture changes and strong cold periods (Heinrich events). All these variations are preserved in sediments of marine and also some terrestrial archives. Here we present a continuous, terrestrial sediment record with almost all Greenland stadials and Heinrich events between 60 and 13 ka visible from carbonate roundness of the Eifel Laminated Sediment Archive Dust Stack-20 and CaCO3 data for central Europe. The carbonate roundness data show almost all stadials between 60 and 13 ka. CaCO3 data show a general transport system change with the beginning of Heinrich event 3. Since there are no ca…
Composition and provenance analysis of beach sands in an almost isolated sedimentary system – A field study of the Galápagos Archipelago
The Galapagos Archipelago is the surface expression of an active hotspot or long-lived mantle plume. The Archipelago consists of a group of 13 main islands which are located in the eastern central Pacific Ocean about 1,000 km west of the northern edge of the South American continent, east of the East Pacific Rise and south of the Galapagos spreading center. Because of the large distance to the nearest continental land mass, Galapagos can be seen as an almost isolated sedimentary system. A provenance study conducted on samples collected from seventeen beaches on eleven islands, demonstrates that mineral grains and particles were derived from weathering of predominantly basaltic rocks and wer…
Multi-proxy dating of Holocene maar lakes and Pleistocene dry maar sediments in the Eifel, Germany
Abstract During the last twelve years the ELSA Project (Eifel Laminated Sediment Archive) at Mainz University has drilled a total of about 52 cores from 27 maar lakes and filled-in maar basins in the Eifel/Germany. Dating has been completed for the Holocene cores using 6 different methods (210Pb and 137Cs activities, palynostratigraphy, event markers, varve counting, 14C). In general, the different methods consistently complement one another within error margins. Event correlation was used for relating typical lithological changes with historically known events such as the two major Holocene flood events at 1342 AD and ca 800 BC. Dating of MIS2–MIS3 core sections is based on greyscale tunin…
14. Abrupt cooling events at the very end of the last interglacial
Abstract A comparison of a last interglacial annually laminated and varve counted maar lake record from the Eifel/Germany, with a laminated lake sediment record from Northern Germany, shows that high-resolution cores can be correlated across central Europe by dust/loess content, if the resolution of grain-size data is on the order of decades/centuries. Phases of widespread dust dispersal are the same as the cold events in the Greenland ice and North Atlantic sea-surface temperature patterns. The first occurrence of dust in Northern Germany and in the Eifel is during the late Eemian aridity pulse (LEAP, Sirocko et al., 2005) which is called C26 in ocean records (McManus, this volume). This c…
The reconstruction of easterly wind directions for the Eifel region (Central Europe) during the period 40.3–12.9 ka BP
Abstract. A high resolution continuous reconstruction of last glacial wind directions is based on provenance analysis of eolian sediments in a sediment core from the Dehner dry Maar in the Eifel region (Germany). This Maar is suitable to archive easterly wind directions due to its location west of the Devonian carbonate basins of the Eifel-North-South-Zone. Thus, eolian sediments with high clastic carbonate content can be interpreted as an east wind signal. The detection of such east wind sediments is applied by a new module of the RADIUS grain size analyze technique. The investigated time period from 40.3–12.9 ka BP can be subclassified in three units: The first unit covers the periods of …
Dust-stack 2009 of combined sediment record ELSA
The last glacial cycle in Central Europe is dominated by processes of aeolian dust transport and accumulation. These dust deposits are preserved in soils and lake sediments and provide detailed information about the climate variability during cold and dry periods. Especially the transitions from warm into cold periods are characterized by turbulent climate conditions. The main problems of terrestrial paleoclimate reconstructions are the completeness of the core material and a sampling resolution. To detect single dust storms we use a particle detection method, which allows high resolution, sub-annual analyses of sediment structures in undisturbed samples. The ELSA (Eifel Laminated Sediment …
Dust-stack 2013 of combined sediment record ELSA
During the last twelve years the ELSA Project (Eifel Laminated Sediment Archive) at Mainz University has drilled a total of about 52 cores from 27 maar lakes and filled-in maar basins in the Eifel/Germany. Dating has been completed for the Holocene cores using 6 different methods (210Pb and 137Cs activities, palynostratigraphy, event markers, varve counting, 14C). In general, the different methods consistently complement one another within error margins. Event correlation was used for relating typical lithological changes with historically known events such as the two major Holocene flood events at 1342 AD and ca 800 BC. Dating of MIS2?MIS3 core sections is based on greyscale tuning, radioc…
Record of pollen, silt and greyscale stack from the Eifel Laminated Sediment Archive (ELSA)
Investigating the processes that led to the end of the last interglacial period is relevant for understanding how our ongoing interglacial will end, which has been a matter of much debate. A recent ice core from Greenland demonstrates climate cooling from 122,000 years ago driven by orbitally controlled insolation, with glacial inception at 118,000 years ago. Here we present an annually resolved, layer-counted record of varve thickness, quartz grain size and pollen assemblages from a maar lake in the Eifel (Germany), which documents a late Eemian aridity pulse lasting 468 years with dust storms, aridity, bushfire and a decline of thermophilous trees at the time of glacial inception. We inte…