Rights statement: Open Access funded by Natural Environment Research Council Under a Creative Commons license
Final published version, 1.14 MB, PDF document
Available under license: CC BY: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Final published version
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Interrogating trees for isotopic archives of atmospheric sulphur deposition and comparison to speleothem records
AU - Wynn, Peter Michael
AU - Loader, Neil J
AU - Fairchild, IJ
PY - 2014/4/30
Y1 - 2014/4/30
N2 - Palaeorecords which depict changes in sulphur dynamics form an invaluable resource for recording atmospheric pollution. Tree rings constitute an archive that are ubiquitously available and can be absolutely dated, providing the potential to explore local- to regional-scale trends in sulphur availability. Rapid isotopic analysis by a novel “on-line” method using elemental analyser isotope ratio mass spectrometry (EA-IRMS) is developed, achieving sample precision of <0.4‰ using sample sizes of 40 mg wood powder. Tree cores from NE Italy show trends in pollution, evidenced through increasing concentrations of sulphur towards the youngest growth, and inverse trends in sulphur isotopes differentiating modern growth with light sulphur isotopes (+0.7‰) from pre-industrial growth (+7.5‰) influenced by bedrock composition. Comparison with speleothem records from the same location demonstrate replication, albeit offset in isotopic value due to groundwater storage. Using EA-IRMS, tree ring archives form a valuable resource for understanding local- to regional-scale sulphur pollution dynamics.
AB - Palaeorecords which depict changes in sulphur dynamics form an invaluable resource for recording atmospheric pollution. Tree rings constitute an archive that are ubiquitously available and can be absolutely dated, providing the potential to explore local- to regional-scale trends in sulphur availability. Rapid isotopic analysis by a novel “on-line” method using elemental analyser isotope ratio mass spectrometry (EA-IRMS) is developed, achieving sample precision of <0.4‰ using sample sizes of 40 mg wood powder. Tree cores from NE Italy show trends in pollution, evidenced through increasing concentrations of sulphur towards the youngest growth, and inverse trends in sulphur isotopes differentiating modern growth with light sulphur isotopes (+0.7‰) from pre-industrial growth (+7.5‰) influenced by bedrock composition. Comparison with speleothem records from the same location demonstrate replication, albeit offset in isotopic value due to groundwater storage. Using EA-IRMS, tree ring archives form a valuable resource for understanding local- to regional-scale sulphur pollution dynamics.
KW - Sulphur
KW - Isotopes
KW - Tree rings
KW - Biogeochemistry
KW - Speleothems
KW - Pollution
U2 - 10.1016/j.envpol.2013.12.017
DO - 10.1016/j.envpol.2013.12.017
M3 - Journal article
VL - 187
SP - 98
EP - 105
JO - Environmental Pollution
JF - Environmental Pollution
SN - 0269-7491
ER -