Burial of Different Types of Organic Carbon in Core 17962 from South China Sea since the Last Glacial Period

Total organic carbon (TOC), black carbon (BC), and land-derived organic carbon (LOC) extracted from marine sediment core 17962 from the southern South China Sea and analyzed by pyrolysis gas chromatography, elemental analyzers, and mass spectroscopy can be interpreted in terms of regional land biomass burning, climatic conditions, vegetation cover, and ocean paleoproductivity. Carbon from terrestrial sources, including BC and LOC, appears to be a significant component of TOC (3.1–39.3% range, 16.5% average for BC; 4.4–56.6% range, 14.6% average for LOC). The production of BC and LOC was only slightly higher during the Last Maximum Glaciation (LGM) than during the Holocene. Therefore, dramatic changes in climate and vegetation cover do not seem to have occurred at the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary. Paleoproductivity data calculated from marine organic carbon, proved to be more accurate than those calculated from TOC and exhibit the same pattern of temporal variation. However, the glacial–interglacial contrast in the refined palaeoproductivity is less evident than that calculated from TOC.