Distribution of glycerol ethers in Turpan soils: implications for use of GDGT-based proxies in hot and dry regions

Abstract

Proxies based on glycerol dialkyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs), a suite of membrane lipids occurring ubiquitously in soils, have generated increasing interest in quantitative paleo-environmental reconstruction. Hot and dry climates are likely to have occurred in the geological past; however, the limitations and applicability of these proxies to hot and dry environments are still unknown. In this study, we analyzed the GDGT distribution in the Turpan (TRP) basin of China, where the highest soil temperature can be approximately 70°C, and the mean annual precipitation (MAP) is 15.3 mm. We compared GDGT-based proxies among TRP soils, Nanyang (NY) soils, and Kunming (KM) soils; these three sites exhibit similar mean annual air temperature (MAAT) albeit contrasting temperature seasonality and MAP. Archaeal isoprenoidal GDGTs (isoGDGTs) dominate over bacterial branched GDGTs (brGDGTs) in most TRP soils; this is a characteristic GDGT distribution pattern for soils from dry regions globally. Another feature is the anomalously high GDGT-0/crenarchaeol ratio, which is generally attributed to the contribution of anaerobic methanogenic archaea by previous studies; however, these anaerobic archaea are unlikely to be highly abundant in the dry TRP soils, indicating that certain uncultured halophilic Euryarchaeota are likely to produce a significant amount of GDGT-0 that finally results in a high GDGT-0/Cren ratio. The changes in the salinity of the TRP soils appear to be an important factor affecting the MBT’_5ME and the relative abundance of 6- vs. 5-methyl pentamethylated brGDGTs (IR_IIa’). This is likely to introduce certain scatters in the correlations between MBT’_5ME and MAAT and that between IR_IIa’ and pH determined at the global scale. A comparison of the MBT’_5ME-inferred temperature between TRP, NY, and KM soils does not indicate a significant bias toward summer temperature, indicating that brGDGT paleo-thermometers in soils could reflect the MAAT.

Keywords

GDGTs / Turpan soils / semi-arid and arid areas / salinity / MBT’_5ME

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Acknowledgements

We sincerely thank four anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments, which improved the quality of our original manuscript. The work was sponsored by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41602189), the project of ‘Cradle Plan’, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan (No. CUGL170403). We also thank Chao GAO and Yue LI for assistance with experiments and Shijin ZHAO for sample analysis.

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