Pre-aged plant waxes in tropical lake sediments and their influence on the chronology of molecular paleoclimate proxy records

摘要

Sedimentary records of plant-wax hydrogen (delta D-wax) and carbon (delta C-13(wax)) stable isotopes are increasingly applied to infer past climate change. Compound-specific radiocarbon analyses, however, indicate that long time lags can occur between the synthesis of plant waxes and their subsequent deposition in marginal marine sediments. The influence of these time lags on interpretations of plant-wax stable isotope records is presently unconstrained, and it is unclear whether such time lags also affect lacustrine sediments. We present compound-specific radiocarbon (C-14(wax)) data for n-alkanoic acid plant waxes (n-C-26 to n-C-32) from: (1) a sediment core from Lake Chichancanab, Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, (2) soils in the Lake Chichancanab catchment, and (3) surface sediments from three other lakes in southeastern Mexico and northern Guatemala. C-14(wax) ages in the surface sediments are consistently older than modern, and may be negatively correlated with mean annual precipitation and positively correlated with lake catchment area. C-14(wax) ages in soils surrounding Lake Chichancanab increase with soil depth, consistent with deep, subsoil horizons being the primary source of lacustrine aged plant waxes, which are likely delivered to lake sediments through subsurface transport.