A high-resolution Late Quaternary climatostratigraphic record from Iskitim, Priobie Loess Plateau, SW Siberia

Abstract

The Siberian loess, being a part of the Eurasian loess belt, has provided the most complete terrestrial record of past climate change in the north-central Asia. The continuous high-resolution sections of aeolian dust deposits inter-bedded with fossil soils from the Priobie Loess Plateau and the Northern Altai Plains – mapped as a part of the 2000 km W–E Siberian palaeoclimate transect – have produced extraordinary evidence of the Late Quaternary climate evolution and landscape development in the parkland-steppe north of the Altai-Sayan Mountains. A complete stratigraphic loess-palaeosol record was studied at the Iskitim reference section, spanning the last c. 250 ka (MIS 7-1). The climate-indicative proxy data (magnetic susceptibility, grain size, %CaCO3, %TOC) and thin-section studies show marked and cyclic climatic variations, particularly pronounced during the Last Interglacial–Glacial cycle equivalent to the loess reference sites from the Yenisei and Katun/Altai Plain areas (the Kurtak and Krasnogorskoye sections).