Composition,Origin and Environmental Interpretation of Minerals in Lake Sediments and Recent Progress

Abstract

Lake sediment is an integrated content of detrital,clay,authigenic/biogenic minerals and organic matter under various geologic,climatic and hydrologic conditions.The minerals bear abundant information on regional and global environmental changes,such as lake water chemistry,basin tectonics,climate,hydrology,and human activity interaction,etc.The information hosts in external appearance,internal microstructures,chemical compositions,physical and chemical properties,isotopic compositions,spectroscopy,origin,and assemblage of minerals,etc.Therefore,many key topics of lake sciences are depended upon mineralogy,in particular during the reconstruction of past regional/global changes using lake sediments.The understanding on mechanism should involve in mineralogy,including catchment weathering processes,grain size variation,shell chemistry,and dating material.However,owing to various sources and complexity of minerals in lake sediments,how to withdraw and interpret mineral-bearing environmental information is a longstanding troubling,resulting in that mineralogy of lake sediments is overlooked often by some researchers,also in China.In this paper,the assemblage,characters and origins of detrital,clay,authigenic/biogenic minerals in lake sediments and their role in paleoenvironmental reconstruction were reviewed,then some potential research topics were suggested,such as the transformation among minerals and its response to chemistry of lake and pore waters,the roles in lake chemistry and dynamics of some amorphous,cryptocrystalline and low abundance minerals in lake sediments,in addition to the continued researches on lake mineral source,origin and paleoenvironmental tracing,and finally some problems and challenges were put further forward to.