Laminated soil carbonate rinds as a paleoclimate archive of the Colorado Plateau

•A laminated soil carbonate rind from Utah acts as a paleoarchive from 35–5 ka.•We constrain soil conditions through time to enable quantitative interpretation.•Reconstructed vegetation correlates with regional pollen and soil records.•Reconstructed soil water δ18O correlates with regional hydrologi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Geochimica et cosmochimica acta Vol. 282; pp. 227 - 244
Main Authors:	Huth, T.E., Cerling, T.E., Marchetti, D.W., Bowling, D.R., Ellwein, A.L., Passey, B.H., Fernandez, D.P., Valley, J.W., Orland, I.J.
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	United States Elsevier Ltd 01-08-2020 Elsevier; The Geochemical Society; The Meteoritical Society
Subjects:	Carbon and oxygen isotopes Colorado Plateau GEOSCIENCES Laminated soil carbonate rind North American Monsoon Quaternary Radiocarbon Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry Laminated soil carbonate rind Carbon and oxygen isotopes North American Monsoon Colorado Plateau Radiocarbon Quaternary Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry
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Summary:	•A laminated soil carbonate rind from Utah acts as a paleoarchive from 35–5 ka.•We constrain soil conditions through time to enable quantitative interpretation.•Reconstructed vegetation correlates with regional pollen and soil records.•Reconstructed soil water δ18O correlates with regional hydrologic records.•Rinds allow long-term, high-resolution (100 s yr/sample) paleoclimate reconstruction. Recent work suggests that the C- and O-isotope composition of laminated soil carbonate rinds can provide high-resolution (100 s yr/sample) information about hydrologic processes and vegetation over tens of thousands of years. However, while this archive can potentially provide quantitative reconstructions, most interpretations have thus far been qualitative. In this study, we show how modern soil data and “clumped” isotope paleothermometry can be leveraged to constrain the conditions of rind formation for a sample from the western Colorado Plateau, Utah, USA. We can thus quantitatively interpret rind isotope values as vegetation composition (%C3–plants) and soil water oxygen isotope composition (δ18Osoil–water) over 35–5 ka. We validate the approach by demonstrating consistency between our record and other paleoarchives from the western USA. Laminated soil carbonate rinds therefore represent a new avenue for sub-millennial scale, quantitative investigations of paleoclimatology, paleoecology, archeology, and modeling questions down to the level of individual soils.
Bibliography:	FG02-93ER14389; 1325214; 1325225; 1137336 National Science Foundation (NSF) USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES). Chemical Sciences, Geosciences & Biosciences Division
ISSN:	0016-7037 1872-9533
DOI:	10.1016/j.gca.2020.05.022