Mid- and late Holocene dust deposition in western Europe: the Misten peat bog (Hautes Fagnes – Belgium)

Abstract

Abstract. Dust deposition in southern Belgium is estimated from the geochemical signature of an ombrotrophic peatland. The rare earth elements (REE) and lithogenic elements concentrations, as well as Nd isotopes, were determined by HR-ICP-MS and MC-ICP-MS, respectively, along an ∼ 6 m peat section covering 5300 yr, from 2000 to 7300 cal BP, dated by the 14 C method. Changes in REE concentration in the peat correlate with those of Ti, Al, Sc and Zr that are lithogenic conservative elements, suggesting that REE are immobile in the studied peat bogs and can be used as tracers of dust deposition. Peat humification and testate amoebae were used to evaluate hydroclimatic conditions. The range of dust deposition varied from 0.03 to 4.0 g m −2 yr −1 . The highest dust fluxes were observed from 2750 to 2550 cal BP and from 5150 to 4750 cal BP, and correspond to cold periods. The εNd values show a large variability from −13 to −5, identifying three major sources of dusts: local soils, distal volcanic and desert particles.

Periodic input of dust over the Eastern Carpathians during the Holocene linked with Saharan desertification and human impact

“…3). With the periodic influence of the Mediterranean air masses in the region (Apostol, 2008;Bojariu and Paliu, 2001), Saharan dust must be considered as a potential source area since it appears to play a major role in dust input into Europe today (e.g. Athanasopoulou et al, 2016).…”

Reconstructing Early Atlantic to Early Subatlantic peat-forming conditions of the ombrotrophic Misten Bog (eastern Belgium) on the basis of high-resolution analyses of pollen, testate amoebae and geochemistry

“…Results on palynology and testate amoebae were published by Streel et al (2014). The lower part (MIS-08-01b), sometimes named below the "long core", was cored with a Belorussian corer (Belokopytov & Veresnevich, 1955) and reached a depth of 7.5 m (Allan et al, 2013).…”

“…Nine samples were prepared at the GADAM Centre (Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland) according to the protocol described by Piotrowska et al (2011) andPiotrowska (2013). Radiocarbon dates (n = 15) obtained by acceleration mass spectrometry (AMS) were processed using the "Bacon" software (Blaauw & Christen, Allan et al (2013). The colourings indicate the peat thickness as deduced from surface radar prospection (Wastiaux, 2002).…”

“…The accumulation rate was set as a gamma distribution with a mean of 10 yr cm −1 . The accumulation variability was set with a beta distribution with strength of 4 and a mean of 0.7 (Allan et al, 2013). The ranges of calibrated radiocarbon ages of dated peat layers involved in the present work (MIS-08-01b) are presented in Table 1.…”

Geochemical characterization (REE, Nd and Pb isotopes) of atmospheric mineral dust deposited in two maritime peat bogs from the St. Lawrence North Shore (eastern Canada)

“…Easily and reliably dated, the potential of peat bogs for high-resolution reconstructions of Holocene climate variability through the use of multiple indicators is well established (de Jong et al, 2010, and references therein). Peat bog records of temporal variability of rare earth elements (REEs) and Nd isotopes have been used to identify climaterelated changes in dust deposition worldwide such as the importance of Sahara arifidication on the dust loads over Western Europe (Le Roux et al, 2012;Allan et al, 2013), a strengthening of the westerlies during the Antarctic Cold Reversal in Tierra del Fuego (Vanneste et al, 2015) and glacier fluctuations during the late Holocene in Patagonia (Vanneste et al, 2016).…”