Application of standardised growth curves in quartz OSL dating of lacustrine sediments on the Mongolian Plateau

Abstract The standardised growth curves (SGCs) can compensate for the drawbacks of the single-aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) procedure, such as low utilization of time and instrument in the optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating. In this study, 12 sedimentary samples of 6 lakes from the Mongolian Plateau were selected and 90–125 μm coarse-grains quartz was extracted to establish SGCs. The results show that the OSL signals are mainly composed of a fast component, which is applicable for SAR procedure. The difference in the shape of the dose response curves (DRCs) limits the application of the standardised growth curve (SGC) for which the growth curves among the aliquots corrected by the test dose are scattered. The equivalent dose (De) estimated by the global standardised growth curve (gSGC) by the regenerative normalization (re-normalization) method is more consistent with the full SAR procedure, so the gSGC method is suitable for determining the De values on the regional scale of Mongolian Plateau. For different lacustrine sedimentary samples, the De values estimated by full SAR procedure and gSGC method are consistent for the doses of up to ~280 Gy. The discrepancy of growth curves may result from the sensibility changes of inter-cycle in SAR measurement and the recuperation, also we do not exclude the influence of feldspar inclusions.