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14C Dating of Soil Organic Carbon (SOC) in Loess-Paleosol Using Sequential Pyrolysis and Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2016

Peng Cheng ,
Weijian Zhou ,
Hong Wang ,
Xuefeng Lu  and
Hua Du
Peng Cheng*
Affiliation:
State Key Lab Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, China Shaanxi Province Key Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Technology and Application, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi'an 710043, China
Weijian Zhou
Affiliation:
State Key Lab Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, China Shaanxi Province Key Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Technology and Application, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi'an 710043, China Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China
Hong Wang
Affiliation:
Illinois State Geological Survey, Prairie Research Institute, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois 61820, USA
Xuefeng Lu
Affiliation:
State Key Lab Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, China Shaanxi Province Key Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Technology and Application, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi'an 710043, China Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an 710049, China
Hua Du
Affiliation:
State Key Lab Loess and Quaternary Geology, Institute of Earth Environment, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xi'an 710075, China Shaanxi Province Key Laboratory of Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Technology and Application, Institute of Earth Environment, CAS, Xi'an 710043, China
*
3Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

The chemical extraction of soil organic carbon (SOC) fractions from soils often does not produce satisfactory results for radiocarbon dating. In this study, a sequential pyrolysis technique was investigated. The soil was pyrolyzed at temperatures of 200, 400, 600, and 800 °C to partition organic carbon into pyrolytic volatile (Py-V) and pyrolytic residue (Py-R) fractions. The preliminary results show that the 14C dates of both fractions become progressively older as the pyrolysis temperature is increased. In addition, the ages of the Py-V fractions are consistently younger than the corresponding Py-R fractions extracted at the same temperature. Experimental results of known-age paleosol samples indicate that the Py-V fractions obtained between 600 and 800 °C yield the most reliable ages. This technique provides a new approach to improve the accuracy of 14C dating of loess-paleosol sequences.

Type
Articles
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 55 , Issue 2: Proceedings of the 21st International Radiocarbon Conference (Part 1 of 2) , 2013 , pp. 563 - 570
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by the Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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