Advances in Earth Science ›› 2005, Vol. 20 ›› Issue (12): 1314-1320. doi: 10.11867/j.issn.1001-8166.2005.12.1314

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A REVIEW ON ALUMINUM TO TITANIUM RATIO AS A GEOCHEMICAL PROXY TO RECONSTRUCT PALEOPRODUCTIVITY

REN Jingling 1, ZHANG Jing 1,2, LIU Sumei 1   

  1. 1.College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Ocean University of China, Qingdao 266003, China;2.State Key Laboratory of Estuary and Coastal Research,East China Normal University,Shanghai 200062,China
  • Received:2005-04-06 Revised:2005-07-18 Online:2005-12-25 Published:2005-12-25

REN Jingling, ZHANG Jing, LIU Sumei. A REVIEW ON ALUMINUM TO TITANIUM RATIO AS A GEOCHEMICAL PROXY TO RECONSTRUCT PALEOPRODUCTIVITY[J]. Advances in Earth Science, 2005, 20(12): 1314-1320.

Accordingly, Aluminum is always used as the normalized element by geochemists to minimize the natural variability of heavy metals in the sediments, which includes the effect of sedimentary origin, grainsize and mineral composition. Thus, measurements of Al in marine sediments are always used to determine quantitatively the amount of terrestrial material in a given sample. However, this normalized method met problems in the open ocean. The results indicate that there exists significant non-detritus Al (excess Al) component in the sediments of open ocean near the equator, where the sediments were composed mainly by biogenic compositions other than terrestrial matter. Excess Al can account for nearly 50% of the total Al in the sediments. Therefore, using Al abundance to estimate the terrestrial matter abundance in marine sediments, which is generally used in the previous studies, may give over-estimated results. It is suggested that Ti and Sc be used as normalized elements to minimize the effects of terrestrial matter in the open oceans. The results show that Al/Ti ratio can be used to reconstruct the biogenic sediment accumulation and hence productivity through time in the biogenic regimes where terrestrial input is only slight. The newest progresses in the geochemical proxy of Al/Ti ratio to reconstruct the paleoproductivity are presented. Problems may appear when this geochemical proxy is applied in the coastal and shelf regions, which is also discussed in the paper.

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