25th International Meeting on Organic Geochemistry IMOG 2011

O-62
A reappraisal of long-chain diol proxies
Sebastiaan Rampen 1 , Veronica Willmott 1 , Jung-Hyun Kim 1 , Eleonora Uliana 2 , Enno
Schefuß 2 , Jaap Sinninghe Damsté 1 , Stefan Schouten 1
1 NIOZ Netherlands Institute for Sea Research, Den Burg, Netherlands, 2 Marum Center for Marine
Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Bremen, Germany (corresponding
author:sebastiaan.rampen@nioz.nl)
Since their first identification in the early 1980s, longchain
1,13-, 1,14- and 1,15-diols have been reported
widespread as often abundant biomarkers in
Quaternary marine sediments. Long-chain 1,13- and
1,15-diols were identified in eustigmatophyte algae
but their distribution differed from those in sediments,
making the role of these algae as a major source of
long-chain diols in marine environments questionable
[1]. Long-chain 1,14-diols were reported in the diatom
genus Proboscia and it was suggested that these
algae could be a major source for these specific longchain
diol isomers in upwelling areas [2]. This resulted
in the introduction of a long-chain 1,14-diol proxy as a
marker for upwelling intensity [3], and a study of the
relationship between temperature and the long-chain
1,14-diol chain-length in Proboscia diatoms
suggested the potential application as a
palaeotemperature proxy [4].
In this study, we performed an extensive global
marine surface sediment study on long-chain diols to
test various long-chain diol proxies. A total of 179
marine surface sediments, collected from worldwide
locations, were analyzed for long-chain diols. 82% of
these sediments contained quantifiable long-chain
1,14-diols although unsaturated long-chain 1,14-diols
were only detected in 60% of the sediments.
Quantifiable amounts of long-chain 1,13- and/or 1,15diols
were present in 76% of the marine surface
sediments In 73% of the sediments both 1,14-diols
and 1,13- and/or 1,15-diols were present at
quantifiable concentrations.
The results show that the use of the 1,14-upwelling
proxy is limited on a global scale and that there is no
clear relation between temperature and 1,14-diol
chain-length in surface sediments, possibly due to
input of different algal species. However, analysis of
the dataset did result in a novel proxy, the Diol Isomer
IndeX (DIX), based on distributions of long-chain
1,13- and 1,15-diols, and this index shows a
significant relationship with sea surface temperatures
(r 2 = 0.97, p < 0.001, Fig. 1). The new index was
tested on a core from the Congo fan, covering the last
43 kyr, and, like the U K‘ 37, the DIX recorded known
climate events such as the Younger Dryas and the
Last Glacial Maximum. Thus, the DIX may potentially
be used as a proxy for palaeo-SST complementary to
other organic SST proxies such as the U K‘ 37 and the
TEX86.
DIX DIX
1.0
0.5
y = 0.03x + 0.01
r2 y = 0.03x + 0.01
r = 0.97 2 = 0.97
-5 0 5 10 15 20 25 30
Annual mean SST, 0 m (°C)
Fig. 1. DIX values vs. Annual mean SST.
References
[1] Volkman J.K. et al. 1992. Org. Geochem. 18, 131-
138.
[2] Sinninghe Damsté .S.J. et al. 2003. Geochim.
Cosmochim. Acta 67, 1339-1348.
[3] Rampen S.W. et al. 2008. Earth Planet. Sci. .Lett.
276, 207-213.
[4] Rampen S.W. et al. 2009. Org. Geochem. 40,
1124-1131.
123