Climatic implications of loess deposits from the Beijing region

Variations in magnetostratigraphy, pedostratigraphy, grain size and magneti c susceptibility of the loess deposits near Beijing have been studied at tw o sections. The sections are about 400 km east of the main loess deposits i n China, have a maximum thickness of 100 m and extend back to 1.1 Ma. The s equence consists of 14 loess-palaeosol couplets (SO-S14), which correlate w ell with sequences in the Loess Plateau. Susceptibility records from the si tes near Beijing are comparable to the Xifeng, Luochuan and Baoji sections located in the middle part of the Loess Plateau; however, the down-core var iations in the grain size in the Upper Lishi Formation exhibit some differe nces. The median grain size increases by about 25-30 mum from L4 to L2, wit h the sandy grains (> 63 mum) increasing from 10-20 wt% to 40-50 wt%. This implies that the depositional environment of the dust sources in the Beijin g loess section is different in some aspects from the Loess Plateau. The Be ijing loess may have had a different dust source than the Loess Plateau. Co pyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.