Sulfur Geochemistry of a Lacustrine Record from Taiwan Reveals Enhanced Marine Aerosol Input during the Early Holocene

Abstract

Lacustrine record of marine aerosol input has rarely been documented. Here, we present the sulfur geochemistry during the last deglaciation and early Holocene of a sediment core retrieved from the Dongyuan Lake in southern Taiwan. An unusually high sulfur peak accompanying pyrite presence is observed at 10.5 ka BP. Such high sulfur content in lacustrine record is unusual. The δ34S of sulfur varied from +9.5 to + 17.1‰ with two significant positive shifts at 10.5 and 9.4 ka BP. The sources of sulfur and potential processes involving the sulfur isotope variation including bacterial sulfate reduction, volcanic emissions, in-catchment sulfide oxidation and marine aerosol input are discussed. Enhanced marine aerosol input is the most likely explanation for such sulfur peaks and δ34S shifts. The positive δ34S shifts appeared concurrently with the maximum landslide events over Taiwan resulted from enhanced typhoon activities. The synchronicity among records suggests that increased typhoon activities promoted sea spray, and consequently enhanced the marine aerosol input with 34S-enriched sulfate. Our sulfur geochemistry data revealed sea spray history and marine influence onto terrestrial environment at coastal regions. Wider coverage of spatial-temporal lacustrine sulfur geochemistry record is needed to validate the applicability of sulfur proxy in paleoenvironmental research.

Refining Holocene sea‐level variations for the Lofoten and Vesterålen archipelagos, northern Norway: implications for prehistoric human–environment interactions

“…Sulfate is a major ion in seawater, but is typically only found in trace amounts in freshwater and can be used to track marine influence in coastal environments as well as water column stratification and anoxic bottom water conditions (e.g. Jessen et al, 2008; Leng et al, 2012; Ding et al, 2016). Samples were freeze‐dried and ground, and aliquots of 4–6 mg were analyzed using an Elementar vario MICRO cube element analyzer.…”

Mercury records covering the past 90 kyr from lakes Prespa and Ohrid, SE Europe

“…Some systems do not exhibit a relation to TOC and Hg may instead be adsorbed onto (fine-grained) detrital minerals and detected by a correlation between Hg and mineral dominating elements such as aluminium (Al), titanium (Ti), zirconium (Zr), rubidium (Rb), or potassium (K) (Sanei et al, 2012;Sial et al, 2013;. In few cases, sulphide minerals may act as important Hg hosts (Benoit et al, 1999;Han et al, 2008), however this is less common in freshwater lacustrine systems where sulphate-reduction is often limited and only a small fraction of non-organic sulfur is buried (Ding et al, 2016;Holmer and Storkholm, 2001;Tisserand et al, 2022;Watanabe et al, 2004).…”