Biogeosciences www.biogeosciences.net 1726-4170 1726-4189 5 5 2008 10.5194/bg-5-1325-2008 http://www.biogeosciences.net/5/1325/2008/ http://www.biogeosciences.net/5/1325/2008/bg-5-1325-2008.html http://www.biogeosciences.net/5/1325/2008/bg-5-1325-2008.pdf 1325 1337 2008-09-18 Paleovegetation reconstruction using δ¹³C of Soil Organic Matter G. Wang gawang@cau.edu.cn X. Feng J. Han L. Zhou W. Tan F. Su Key Laboratory of Plant –Soil Interactions, Ministry of Education, College of Resources and Environment, China Agricultural University, Beijing 100094, China Department of Earth Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire 03755, USA Institute of Geology and Geophysics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100029, China College of Environmental Sciences, MOE Laboratory for Earth Surface Processes, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China The relative contributions of C₃ and C₄ plants to vegetation at a given locality may be estimated by means of δ¹³C of soil organic matter. This approach holds a great potential for paleoecological reconstruction using paleosols. However, two main uncertainties exist, which limits the accuracy of this application. One is δ¹³C-enrichment as the plant carbon becomes incorporated into soil organic matter. The other is due to environmental influences on δ¹³C of plants. Two types of data were collected and analyzed with an objective of narrowing the error of paleovegetation reconstruction. First, we investigated δ¹³C variations of 557 C₃ and 136 C₄ plants along a precipitation gradient in North China. A strong negative correlation is found between the δ¹³C value of C₃ plants averaged for each site and the annual precipitation with a coefficient of −0.40‰/100mm, while no significant coefficients were found for C₄ plants. Second, we measured δ¹³C of soil organic matters for 14 soil profiles at three sites. 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