Accumulation of aeolian sediments around the Tengger Desert during the late Quaternary and its implications on interpreting chronostratigraphic records from drylands in north China

Abstract Chronostratigraphic records in the drylands of north China provide essential archives to reveal the dynamic connections between climate changes and behaviours of aeolian systems. This study presents a detailed investigation of aeolian sediment accumulation around the Tengger Desert during the late Quaternary, comprising of grain-size characteristics and sources, sediment types and burial ages, and potential responses to external and localised forces. A combination of previously published chronostratigraphic records and 91 newly dated optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) samples collected from multiple sites covering a wide region of the south margin of the desert are used to constrain the accumulation of aeolian sediments during the late Quaternary. The prevailing strong near-surface winds at 22–19 ka, 18–14 ka, 13–10 ka, and 3–0 ka are found to be in anti-phase relation with the strength of the East Asia summer monsoon (EASM). The widespread attenuation of aeolian activity occurred between 7 and 3 ka. The accumulation of aeolian sediments during the past 250 ka has been controlled by multiple factors, including wind, aridity, sediment availability, and preservation capacity. We demonstrate that the interpretation of chronostratigraphic records is significantly affected by the number of available records, which emphasises the importance of sampling at multiple sites. The synchronous accumulation of aeolian sand and sandy loess at certain periods and the significant overlapping of volume percentage distributions at certain grain-size intervals between the two types of sediments indicate that their responses to external forces may not be independent and that the palaeoclimatic significance of sandy loess accumulated in the desert-loess transition zone requires a reassessment.