Optical dating of sediments from manas lake in northwestern china: Paleoenvironmental and neotectonic implications

Abstract

Manas Lake is a closed lake basin in northern Xinjiang Province of China, with its current lake bed at 244 m a.s.l. Sediments from the lake area provide valuable information about the paleoenvironmental changes in the Westerlies-dominated arid region. To obtain a chronological constraint on the past changes, optically stimulated luminescence dating was conducted on sediments from the lake beaches. The results show that lacustrine episodes dated at ~80-73 ka ago were recorded in northwestern side of the lake at 270 m a.s.l., while paleoshoreline to near-shore environments during ~80-90 ka ago were recorded in the opposite side of the lake at 262 m a.s.l. The ~80 ka old sedimentary layers are overlain by paleoshoreline sediments formed within the last ~1 ka, separated by a large age gap. From this study and the results from previous studies, it is concluded that breaks in sedimentary records are common in the lake area at elevation > 260 m a.s.l. When comparing sedimentary environments at different times from different sites in this study and previous studies, it is suggested that a small amount of uplift of the northwestern side of Manas Lake relative to the southeastern side may have occurred in the last 80 ka.