Standardized Dose–Response Curve (sDRC) Construction for OSL Dating of Quartz from Bohai Coast, NE China

Abstract

The optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating method promises to provide reliable ages for various Quaternary archives. Coastal sedimentation in the Bohai Sea (northeastern China) since the Middle Pleistocene has been influenced by paleoenvironmental and sea-level change, of which dating has been restricted using the OSL dating approach in multiple investigations. In this study, to establish a robust OSL chronological framework of the Bohai coastal sediments more effectively, the regional standardized dose–response curve (sDRC) was constructed for quartz OSL dating in the Bohai Coast (NE China) using two existing approaches. The sDRC-determined equivalent doses are broadly in agreement with those using the individual DRC for each sample. Data used for DRC construction of the fine-grained (FG) quartz samples are less scattered than those of the coarse-grained (CG) quartz samples, probably due to the signal-averaging effect for the FG samples, while the OSL signal of the CG quartz samples might document provenance information that yield relatively scattered distribution. The two approaches used in this study yield identical sDRCs, indicating that both the methods are applicable for sDRC construction in the Bohai Sea.

Keywords

• paleoenvironment
• OSL dating
• standardized dose–response curve (sDRC)
• quartz
• Bohai Coast