Comparison of oxygen isotope values from bulk lake sediment and ostracod valves

The oxygen isotope composition of the water in a lake is largely controlled by the isotopic composition of precipitation in the lake's catchment area, which is, in turn, controlled by a variety of geographic and climatic factors. Accordingly, the potential to reconstruct past isotopic compositions of lake water using authigenic minerals formed in isotopic equilibrium with the lake water makes lake sediments a promising target for paleoclimate reconstructions. Several different materials can be utilized to reconstruct the oxygen isotope composition of paleo-lake water. These include biogenic carbonates, such as shells of macrofossils (e.g., clams and snails), microfossils, (e.g., ostracods) and chemically precipitated carbonates in bulk lake sediment. To evaluate the suitability of different materials for the reconstruction of oxygen isotope values of past precipitation, we compared the oxygen isotope values of bulk lake sediments and ostracod microfossils that were extracted from an 800 meters thick sequence of sediments in the Zada Basin, southwestern Tibet. The sediment was wet-sieved for grain size separation, and the <63 um size fraction was used for the analysis of the bulk lake sediment. The ostracod microfossils were typically separated from the 125-500 um size fraction. Ostracod valves were cleaned using deionized water and ultrasound. When this did not successfully clean them, we used a brush under a microscope. Preliminary results of our work yielded oxygen isotope values of -2 to -22 permil for bulk lake sediment and a narrower range of -4 to -15 permil for ostracod valves (relative to PDB). In some stratigraphic levels, the oxygen isotope values differed by as much as 10 permil. These differences are significantly higher than offsets of several permil which are commonly observed as the result of species specific vital effects during biogenic calcite precipitation. A plausible explanation for this is that the lake sediment contains a significant portion of fine grained detrital carbonate that has been eroded in the lake's catchment area where carbonate rocks are exposed. This suggests that in the case of lakes where carbonate rocks are exposed in the catchment area, bulk lake sediment will not necessarily provide reliable data for paleoclimate reconstructions. It seems more appropriate to base interpretations of oxygen isotope values on measurements of fossils extracted from lake sediments than on the lake sediment itself.