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Pedogenic features and their environmental significance for the Chengdu clay and the underlying clays in the Sichuan Basin, China

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Abstract

The Quaternary aeolian deposits in the Sichuan Basin consist of three stratigraphic units. With the increasing depth, they are the Chengdu clay, brown clay, and red clay. The differences in the pedogenic features of these clays and the sensitivity of the weathering indices of the paleo-aeolian sediments to the present environment remain unclear. Based on the weathering indices of the particle size distribution, mineralogical composition, and element geochemistry, we investigated the pedogenic features of the three clay layers and some modern soils in the Sichuan Basin in China. Based on the results, the Chengdu clay and the underlying clays have all experienced more than moderate weathering, and the intensity of the weathering decreased from the red clay to the Chengdu clay to the brown clay, indicating a climatic evolution from hot and wet to cold and dry to warm and wet since the mid-Pleistocene in the Sichuan Basin. Compared with the underlying parent materials, the modern soils have lower weathering index values (SiO2/(Al2O3+FeO3) and SiO2/Al2O3) and higher Rb/Sr ratios. Although the grain size compositions, chemical index of alteration (CIA), (K2O+Na2O)/Al2O3, and rare earth element (REE) signatures of the paleo-aeolian sediments remained unchanged under the present conditions, the pedogenic index values of the paleo-aeolian sediment outcrops exhibited a varied sensitivity to the present environment. Therefore, the unchanged indices may be more suitable for estimating the paleoenvironment when using exhumed and relict paleosols.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully thank the four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions.

Funding

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41671220).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Environmental Science and Engineering, China West Normal University, Nanchong, 637002, China

    Ruyu Zhou & Xingyue Wen

  2. College of Land and Resources, China West Normal University, Nanchong, 637002, China

    Luyue Ge

  3. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610065, China

    Chengmin Huang

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  1. Ruyu Zhou
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Correspondence to Xingyue Wen.

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Responsible Editor: Stefan Grab

Appendix

Appendix

Table 3 Sampling location, altitude, and depth of the Chengdu clay, brown clay, and red clay samples collected in the Sichuan Basin
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Table 4 Sampling location, altitude, depth, and parent materials of the modern soil profiles and topsoils samples collected in the Sichuan Basin
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Zhou, R., Wen, X., Ge, L. et al. Pedogenic features and their environmental significance for the Chengdu clay and the underlying clays in the Sichuan Basin, China. Arab J Geosci 14, 1993 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-021-08241-6

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