Tracking millenal-scale climate and environnemental change across eurasian loess

The cyclicity of glacial and interglacial conditions, triggered by variations in Earth’s orbital parameters (Milanković cycles), favor over mid-latitudes the emission, transport and deposition of loess (aeolian silt) and the development of soils, respectively. In Eastern Europe, loess-paleosol sequences record past climate change over the last one million years, at most.

The project aims to acquire a multi-disciplinary data set (mineral magnetism, granulometry, and colorimetric parameters) a new loess and paleosol sequence proximal to the city of Pleven (northern Bulgaria), within the Suhia Kladenetz (SK) quarry. The sequence is 27 m in length and was sampled in 2018 at a very high (2 cm) continuous sampling resolution. A complementary sampling campaign was conducted in September of 2021.

The project objectives are to:

• Develop a robust as possible age model for Suhia Kladenetz (SK) loess-paleosol sequence, which archives six paleosol complexes below the present-day soil intercalated within loess, enabling to infer sedimentation rates of the successive glacial stages of deposition;
• Interpret from the multidisciplinary data sets any changes in sediment provenance, the degree and nature of pedogenic alteration in the successive paleosols, and the presence of any cryptotephra;
• Propose a paleoclimate and paleoenvironmental reconstruction for the SK loess and paleosol sequence based on the integrated multidisciplinary data;
• Compare the results with other regional paleoclimate data and assess the added value of the knowledge gain in the understanding of the regional and global climate system.