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- Title
From Desiccation to Re‐Integration of the Yellow River Since the Last Glaciation.
- Authors
Zhao, Yuqi; Fan, Niannian; Nie, Junsheng; Abell, Jordan T.; An, Yu; Jin, Zhangdong; Wang, Chengshan; Zhang, Jiafu; Liu, Xingnian; Nie, Ruihua
- Abstract
The desiccation (extreme drying) of rivers has important implications for the broader Earth System. However, the desiccation history and its linkage to climate are rarely known for numerous major river systems, primarily due to difficulties in recognizing desiccation events from available stratigraphic records. Here, using a combination of geochemical techniques (major and rare‐earth element geochemistry, detrital zircon geochronology, and optically stimulated luminescence dating), we demonstrate that the Yellow River, which maintains the highest sediment load on Earth, became desiccated during the Last Glacial Maximum at approximately 20 thousand years ago. This finding implies that transportation of sediments and dissolved constituents to the oceans via the Yellow River may have decreased substantially or ceased during glacials, which would have ramifications for ocean chemistry and biology. Furthermore, our work highlights the importance of desiccated riverbed sediments as potential dust sources during glacial periods, a finding that is different from what is observed today. Plain Language Summary: Understanding the characteristics of major rivers is important for better constraining changes in the Earth System. Based on new geochemical data, we find that during the period dominated by overall drier and colder climate conditions ∼20,000 years ago, water flow in the upper reaches of the Yellow River was reduced to the point that flow effectively ceased downstream of the Hetao Basin. In other words, the Yellow River was no longer a perennial river between the upper and middle‐low reaches until re‐integrating ∼10,000–5,000 years ago. Moreover, we demonstrate that surface processes related to the Yellow River system are substantially different between colder‐drier and warmer‐wetter intervals, at least for the last ∼40 thousand years, and we suggest caution when using modern observations to infer regional environments and geomorphology related to rivers during colder‐drier periods. Key Points: Provenance changes at the outlet of the Hetao Basin indicate the desiccation and re‐integration of the upper Yellow River over the last ∼40 kaPaleo‐lake shorelines and geochemical proxies confirm that the west Hetao Basin contained the terminal lake for the desiccated Yellow RiverClimate‐river feedbacks across glacial‐interglacial cycles have implications for constraining terrestrial‐marine source‐to‐sink processes
- Subjects
OPTICALLY stimulated luminescence dating; LAST Glacial Maximum; ENDORHEIC lakes; WATERSHEDS; FLUVIAL geomorphology; GEOCHEMISTRY; RIVER channels
- Publication
Geophysical Research Letters, 2023, Vol 50, Issue 15, p1
- ISSN
0094-8276
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1029/2023GL103632