Suitability of calibrated X-ray fluorescence core scanning for environmental geochemical characterisation of heterogeneous sediment cores

Abstract Multi-element analysis of discrete samples via X-Ray fluorescence or inductively coupled plasma spectrometry is commonly used to characterise the composition of solid geo-materials for environmental geochemical characterisation. Conventional geochemical analysis of individual samples is time consuming and costly, which often results in low-resolution sampling with the danger of missing crucial information. X-ray fluorescence Core Scanning (XCS) provides an alternative method to obtain elemental information, which can be potentially used quantitatively when combined with the Multivariate Log-ratio Calibration (MLC) approach. The suitability of the XCS-MLC method was tested for environmental geochemical characterisation on four terrestrial Holocene-Pleistocene sediment cores that have a variable lithology (clay, sand, peat, with variable calcareous content), were stored at ambient room conditions and scanned post sampling. Element contents based on XCS-MLC and conventional geochemical analysis proved to be comparable (R2 > 0.5) for Al, Ca, Cr, Fe, K, Sr, Mn, Ni, Pb, Rb, S, Si, Ti, Zn, Zr, and also for Br as proxy for organic matter. For As, Cu and Ba the correlations were less satisfactory (R2