Loess plateau storage of Northeastern Tibetan plateau-derived Yellow River sediment

Nie, Junsheng; Stevens, Thomas; Rittner, Martin; Stockli, Daniel; Garzanti, Eduardo; Limonta, Mara; Bird, Anna; Andò, Sergio; Vermeesch, Pieter; Saylor, Joel; Lu, Huayu; Breecker, Daniel; Hu, Xiaofei; Liu, Shanpin; Resentini, Alberto; Vezzoli, Giovanni; Peng, Wenbin; Carter, Andrew; Ji, Shunchuan; Pan, Baotian

Abstract

Marine accumulations of terrigenous sediment are widely assumed to accurately record climatic- and tectonic-controlled mountain denudation and play an important role in understanding late Cenozoic mountain uplift and global cooling. Underpinning this is the assumption that the majority of sediment eroded from hinterland orogenic belts is transported to and ultimately stored in marine basins with little lag between erosion and deposition. Here we use a detailed and multi-technique sedimentary provenance dataset from the Yellow River to show that substantial amounts of sediment eroded from Northeast Tibet and carried by the river’s upper reach are stored in the Chinese Loess Plateau and the western Mu Us desert. This finding revises our understanding of the origin of the Chinese Loess Plateau and provides a potential solution for mismatches between late Cenozoic terrestrial sedimentation and marine geochemistry records, as well as between global CO2 and erosion records.

Citation

Nie, J., Stevens, T., Rittner, M., Stockli, D., Garzanti, E., Limonta, M., …Pan, B. (2015). Loess plateau storage of Northeastern Tibetan plateau-derived Yellow River sediment. Nature communications, 6(1), Article ARTN 8511. https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9511

• Acceptance Date: Aug 28, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Oct 9, 2015
• Publication Date: 2015-12
• Deposit Date: Nov 27, 2015
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 23, 2017
• Journal: Nature communications
• Electronic ISSN: 2041-1723
• Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 6
• Issue: 1
• Article Number: ARTN 8511
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms9511
• Keywords: Yellow River
• Public URL: https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/381882
• Publisher URL: http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2015/151009/ncomms9511/full/ncomms9511.html
• Additional Information: This is a Gold Open Access article published in Nature communications, 2015, v.6.