Environmental significance exploration to Tamarix Cone Age Layer in Lop Nur Lake region

摘要

For a long time, it has been short of finding the appropriate dating materials to meet special demands in order to study environmental change in the modern desert areas with strong windy and sandy actions. Tamarix Cone Age Layer provides a new way to overcome this difficulty to some extent. Contained in Tamarix Cone Age Layer, the features such as delta~(13)C and C/N of fallen Tamarix leaves, and thickness and granule composition of sand layer materials have contained the information of climatic and environmental changes. This paper has probed into the feasibility making use of Tamarix Cone Age Layer to reveal the environmental change in Lop Nur Lake region. There are many Tamarix Cones with clear Tamarix Cone Age Layers distributed in the southwestern part of Lop Nur Lake region, one of them with about 10 m in height is located at east bank of lower reaches of Milan River. The Tamarix Cone Age Layers in the upper part of the cone are serial based on the judgment of the whole configuration of sediment hierarchy. Totally 33 samples are sampled according to the order from top age layer down. Every sample contains 4 age layers. The thickness is surveyed on the spot. The measured results of delta~(13C and C/N of fallen Tamarix leaves, and thickness of sand layer materials are shown in Fig. 1.