Evaluation of simple geochemical indicators of aeolian sand provenance: Late Quaternary dune fields of North America revisited

Abstract

Dune fields of Quaternary age occupy large areas of the world's arid and semiarid regions. Despite this, there has been surprisingly little work done on understanding dune sediment provenance, in part because many techniques are time-consuming, prone to operator error, experimental, highly specialized, expensive, or require sophisticated instrumentation. Provenance of dune sand using K/Rb and K/Ba values in K-feldspar in aeolian sands of the arid and semiarid regions of North America is tested here. Results indicate that K/Rb and K/Ba can distinguish different river sands that are sediment sources for dunes and dune fields themselves have distinctive K/Rb and K/Ba compositions. Over the Basin and Range and Great Plains regions of North America, the hypothesized sediment sources of dune fields are reviewed and assessed using K/Rb and K/Ba values in dune sands and in hypothesized source sediments. In some cases, the origins of dunes assessed in this manner are consistent with previous studies and in others, dune fields are found to have a more complex origin than previously thought. Use of K/Rb and K/ Ba for provenance studies is a robust method that is inexpensive, rapid, and highly reproducible. It exploits one of the most common minerals found in dune sand, K-feldspar. The method avoids the problem of using simple concentrations of key elements that may be subject to interpretative bias due to changes in mineralogical maturity of Quaternary dune fields that occur over time.

Geologic map of the Weldona 7.5' quadrangle, Morgan County, Colorado

“…Sand source for the Sterling dune field has not been studied but could be similar to that for the adjacent Greeley dune field (fig. 2); likely sand sources for the latter are the Laramie Formation (Muhs and others, 1996;Aleinikoff and Muhs, 2010;Muhs, 2017) and the Ogallala Formation (Muhs, 2017). Dune orientation in Weldona quadrangle is generally consistent with regional trends reported by Muhs (1985) and Muhs and others (1996) and indicates sand-transporting winds that formed the dunes primarily came from the northwest (Muhs and others, 1996;Madole and others, 2005).…”

“…2). Main sources of sand in the Fort Morgan dune field could include the South Platte River sediments (Muhs and others, 1996;Aleinikoff and Muhs, 2010;Muhs, 2017) and the Tertiary Ogallala Formation (Muhs, 2017). North of the river, eolian sands are considered part of the Sterling dune field (Muhs and others, 1996).…”

Sedimentological and Geochemical Composition of Aeolian Sediments in the Taklamakan Desert: Implications for Provenance and Sediment Supply Mechanisms

“…Journal of Geophysical Research: Earth Surface given its variability within different rock types (Muhs, 2017) and is well established in sedimentary research (Muhs, Bettis, et al, 2008;Muhs et al, 2017;Muhs, 2017). K/Rb was used to distinguish loess deposits of different provenance in Nebraska in North America (Muhs, Bettis, et al, 2008), and in addition it was used to distinguish aeolian sands of different provenance in the dune fields and sand seas of North America (Muhs, 2017;Muhs et al, 2017). Moreover, Muhs et al (2017) proposed that K/Rb could be used as a provenance indicator in many sand seas worldwide.…”

“…Various techniques have been used to trace provenance of desert sediment. These include sediment composition using major, trace, and rare earth elements (REE; Chang et al, 2000;Honda & Shimizu, 1998;Hu & Yang, 2016;Liu & Yang, 2013McLennan et al, 1993;Muhs, Bettis, et al, 2008;Muhs, Budahn, et al, 2008;Muhs et al, 2017;Muhs, 2017;Yang et al, 2007), isotopic composition (Chang et al, 2000;Hattori et al, 2003;McLennan et al, 1993;Rao et al, 2015), mineralogy (Honda & Shimizu, 1998;Lancaster et al, 2015;Muhs, Bettis, et al, 2008;Muhs, Budahn, et al, 2008;Muhs et al, 2017;Muhs, 2017;Rittner et al, 2016;Zhu et al, 1981), detrital zircon U-Pb ages Rittner et al, 2016), and grain size analysis (Honda & Shimizu, 1998;Lancaster et al, 2015;Langford et al, 2016;Muhs, Budahn, et al, 2008;Weltje & Prins, 2007). We collected a series of sediment samples along a north-south transect across the sand sea of the Taklamakan Desert for the measurement of the major, trace, and REE composition of the sand (>63 μm) and dust (<63 μm) fractions, with the aim of determining their respective provenances and to understand the modern supply mechanisms of the desert.…”

Monte Carlo fingerprinting of the terrestrial sources of different particle size fractions of coastal sediment deposits using geochemical tracers: some lessons for the user community

“…To date, there has been much less work on understanding dune sediment provenance, with many studies simply assuming an underlying rock or nearby sedimentary deposit as the primary source or ignoring the source issue altogether. Part of the reason that sand dune provenance studies are uncommon in aeolian geomorphology is that many of the techniques required are time-consuming, prone to operator error and highly specialized, often requiring expensive (some geochemical techniques) or sophisticated instrumentation (Muhs 2017;Muhs et al 2017). Against this knowledge gap, this contribution has reported the results of fine-grained and coarse-grained sediment fingerprinting, based on the application of a Monte Carlo simulation framework, in the coastal catchment of Jagin, south-east of Hormozgan province, southern Iran.…”