Mangshan Loess in Central China and the Paleomonsoon Variations since the Last Interglaciation

Abstract  The Mangshan Yuan is a loess platform on the southern bank of the Yellow River, which is located in northwestern Zhengzhou of Henan Province, China. The typical Zhaoxiayu section of the Mangshan Yuan preserves stratigraphical loess units above S10 with a total thickness of 172.1 m, which includes 15.7 m of the last interglacial paleosol S1, 77.3 m of the last glacial loess L1 that consist of 41.6 m of the late stade L1LL1, 13.2 m of the interstade L1SS1 and 22.5 m of the early stade L1LL2. Based on the age marking points by correlating magnetic susceptibility of the section with the SPECMAP curve, the timescale of the section was constructed, and the average accumulation rate and the resolution of each loess strata over the S2 were subsequently calculated using the susceptibility age model. The results indicate that strata units developed in the glacial, interglacial stages, stadial and interstadial show substantial differences in grain size, average accumulation rate and time resolution ub the Zhaoxiayu section. Specifically, the average accumulation rate of the loess L1LL1 is 3.45 mm/a, whereas that of paleosol S1 is only 0.28 mm/a. Based on the high-resolution records of magnetic susceptibility and >45 μm fraction percentage of the loess-paleosol, the summer and winter monsoon variations as well as their interrelations since the last interglaciation have been discussed, which were correlated with the SPECMAP and the GRIP climate records.