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Comprehending heavy mineral composition of the sandy land in Northeast China (NESL) is of great significance for interpreting generation, pathways, source and geochemistry of sediments in this area. To this end, the fine-grained (<63 μm) aeolian-fluvial sediments and loess deposits, which were taken from the Onqin Daga Sandy Land, the Horqin Sandy Land, the Hulun Buir Sandy Land and the Songnen Sandy Land, and from the downwind loess section (L1), respectively, were analyzed to construct the heavy mineral data set of NESL source and sink and to evaluate feasibility of the heavy mineral method in tracing the source of aeolian dust in Northeast China. Additionally, the <63 μm, 63–125 μm and 125–250 μm fractions of the fluvial sands from the different Balan River reaches having a same source, were analyzed to valuate the impact of the river transport-sedimentation process on the heavy mineral composition. The results show that the NESL shows moderate similarities in the heavy mineral composition, with ilmenite, epidote, zircon and amphibole as the primary minerals. In the source-to-sink system in the NESL, limited by sedimentary differentiation, post-deposition alteration and similar source material composition, the heavy mineral composition of the loess and that of sandy-land sources does not well correlate, indicating single heavy mineral method is incapable of unequivocally detecting loess sources when not considering the physical geographical conditions. The sediments in the different Balan River reaches show clear diversities and grain-size dependency in heavy minerals composition, indicating the river transport-deposition processes exert a clear control on the heavy-mineral composition in the sediment downstream. Both a wide grain-size window and more numbers of samples are needed to obtain a complete heavy-mineral picture in the source area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]