Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating of glacial sediments from Arctic Russia ‐ depositional bleaching and methodological aspects

• Published in: Boreas
• Main Authors: THOMAS, PUTHUSSERRY J., MURRAY, ANDREW S., KJæR, KURT H., FUNDER, SVEND, LARSEN, EILIV
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2006
• Subjects: Arctic; Taymyr; Arkhangelsk; Ice Sheet
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03009480600781933; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1080%2F03009480600781933; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03009480600781933

Optical dating has been extensively used for stratigraphical correlation in the reconstruction of Eurasian ice‐sheet dynamics and palaeoenvironmental changes during the last glaciation. In recent terrestrial studies in Arctic Russia, Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) is the main chronological tool, and has been used across the whole of the Eurasian north. We report new OSL ages obtained on glaciofluvial and glaciolacustrine sediments from the Arkhangelsk and Taymyr regions of Arctic Russia and discuss the characteristics of the quartz OSL signal in terms of its saturation limit, variability among samples from the same location, and initial signal resetting in different depositional environments. It is shown that effect of partial bleaching in our mainly Weichselian samples is trivial because: modern analogues are well zeroed; there is good agreement between OSL and 14 C ages in young samples; and skewness in the dose distribution of relatively older samples is mainly due to varying shapes of the growth curves. The overall reliability of the OSL ages from Arctic Russia, when compared with the limited independent age controls available, appears to be good.