Three climatic cycles recorded in a loess-palaeosol sequence at Semlac (Romania) – Implications for dust accumulation in south-eastern Europe

Abstract

© 2016 Elsevier Ltd Recent investigations of the Semlac loess section in the south-eastern Carpathian Basin, which is situated at an undercut slope position on the right bank of the Mureş River in its lower reaches (Banat region, western Romanian), are presented and discussed. Dating back to marine isotope stage (MIS) 10, the more than 10 m thick loess sequence includes four fossil soil-complexes developed in homogenous and relatively fine silty loess. Because of the good preservation of the sediment, Semlac is regarded as a key section for the Carpathian Basin, which offers possibilities to a) improve the understanding of the type and composition (loess homogeneity and pedogenic alteration) of the lowland loess sequences in the Carpathian Basin also beyond the last interglacial palaoesol complex, b) to reconstruct the temporal evolution of the local loess-palaoesol successions, c) gain better insight into the regional paleoenvironments of the last 300 ka and d) to compare the loess of the region to loess-sequences in adjacent areas and to dust proxy data in the northern hemisphere. An integrated age model based on correlation to reference records and luminescence dating is compiled. Applying this age model we compare climate proxy data from Semlac to both global data and to data from the very southeast of the Carpathian Basin (Vojvodina, Serbia). The obtained results provide new insight into the dust accumulation regime for the eastern Carpathian Basin and offer new palaeoenvironmental information for the region and are an important step towards establishing a catena from the thin loess-like sediments of the Banat foothills in the East towards the thicker and seemingly more complete loess sections of the south-eastern and central Carpathian Basin. Disentangling grain size data from soil formation proxies is used to investigate patterns of non-local dust. Patterns of non-pedogenetic fine material are similar to grain size proxies from China and other parts of the northern hemisphere, suggesting western and eastern Eurasian loess to have (at least partly) similar mechanistic/climatic origins.