Helena Alexanderson

Loess-palaeosol sequences (LPS) and loess like sediments are considered as some of the most significant terrestrial archives of climatic change and past atmospheric mineral dust activity. While these LPS have been widely used to investigate the immense climate disruptions of the last glacial period, relatively little attention has been directed toward the climate variability during the Holocene. The main reasons for this was the lack of LPS with a well-preserved Holocene record and more importantly, that the Holocene is generally considered a period of climatic stability. Loess in north-eastern Serbia drapes the westward slopes of the Carpathian-Balkan Mountain chain and provide a useful insight into climate dynamics, but until recently remained almost unexplored. Latest studies conducted on the Kisiljevo LPS and surrounding sites revealed that these LPS preserve some of the most extensive loess accumulations during the Holocene and MIS 2 thus far discovered in this part of Europe.
This implies that the atmospheric mineral dust activity in this region during the last c. 12 ka was considerably higher than previously assumed and that the Holocene climate variations may have been larger and more frequent than current climate models suggest. To further investigate this, high-resolution, independent age models of additional well preserved Holocene loess are needed. Here we present initial OSL chronologies from LPS in north-eastern and eastern Serbia at a resolution capable of detecting even slight dust accumulation variations and hiatuses. Our dataset incorporates high-resolution Bayesian modelled chronostratigraphies with dust mass accumulation rates, grain size and magnetic susceptibility analyses.
Age-depth models indicate extremely high rates of dust accumulation during the Holocene; this has not been detected elsewhere in the wider region. The observed increase in atmospheric dust concentrations also generally coincides with at least one major Holocene cooling event for the Northern Hemisphere (9000–8000 cal. a. B.P). There were obviously phases of colder and drier climate during the Holocene which allowed a higher atmospheric dust flux and high accumulation rates in the eastern Carpathian Basin.