Mossbauer spectroscopy analysis of iron-containing minerals in the Chinese loess

Abstract

Chinese loess has been analyzed in bulk, using Mossbauer spectroscopy, in order to investigate the effects of climate on the overall iron-containing mineralogy. Strongly weathered loess is found to differ from weakly weathered loess in two significant respects. It contains a much larger content of fine-grained hematite and the ratio of paramagnetic Fe3+/Fe2+ is substantially increased. The indication is that the mineralogy of the dust input to the loess plateau varies as a function of climate. One possibility is that the grain size of the dust fluctuates in response to vegetational cover in proximal source areas. -from Authors