Paleovegetation reconstruction using δ¹³C of Soil Organic Matter

• Main Authors: F. Su, W. Tan, L. Zhou, X. Feng, J. Han, G. Wang
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Copernicus Publications 2008-09-01
• Series: Biogeosciences
• Online Access: http://www.biogeosciences.net/5/1325/2008/bg-5-1325-2008.pdf
• ISSN: 1726-4170; 1726-4189

The relative contributions of C₃ and C₄ plants to vegetation at a given locality may be estimated by means of δ¹³C of soil organic matter. This approach holds a great potential for paleoecological reconstruction using paleosols. However, two main uncertainties exist, which limits the accuracy of this application. One is δ¹³C-enrichment as the plant carbon becomes incorporated into soil organic matter. The other is due to environmental influences on δ¹³C of plants. Two types of data were collected and analyzed with an objective of narrowing the error of paleovegetation reconstruction. First, we investigated δ¹³C variations of 557 C₃ and 136 C₄ plants along a precipitation gradient in North China. A strong negative correlation is found between the δ¹³C value of C₃ plants averaged for each site and the annual precipitation with a coefficient of −0.40‰/100mm, while no significant coefficients were found for C₄ plants. Second, we measured δ¹³C of soil organic matters for 14 soil profiles at three sites. The isotopic difference between vegetation and soil organic matter are evaluated to be 1.8‰ for the surface soil and 2.8‰ for the soil at the bottom of soil profiles. We conducted a sample reconstruction of paleovegetation at the central Chinese Loess Plateau during the Holocene and the Last Glacial (LG), and conclude that, without corrections for δ¹³C-enrichment by decomposition, the C₄ abundance would be overestimated. The importance and uncertainties of other corrections are also discussed.