A Mineralogical Analysis of Karst Sediments and its Implications to the Middle-Late Pleistocene Climatic Changes on the Tibetan Plateau

The minerals in various categories of Tibetan karst sediments were divided into three groups: carbonate, iron and silicate. The carbonate minerals, including calcite, aragonite and dolomite, consist mainly of speleothem, tufa and sinter. Most of the speleothems indicates wetter and warmer periods in early and middle Pleistocene, the youngest being 194,000 years old. The second formation of carbonate mineral, tufa, implies an arid period starting 91,000 years BP. The iron minerals, goethite and hematite, are often mixed up with cave alluvial sediments that are interbedded with flowstones, and the depression sediments. They indicate strong oxidizing environments during their deposition, which is absent at present. The clay minerals, specially kaolinite, were contained in cave alluvial, flowstone and the depression sediments as well. Combined with stratigraphic study and U-series dating, the mineral analysis shows that warmer and wetter climates, which were suitable for speleothem development, probably disappeared 200 ka ago, and drier and colder climates dominated this plateau since then.