Search

Given its high accumulation rate in sediments, the endorheic basin in arid regions plays a crucial role in reconstructing paleo-environment. However, it would not provide high-resolution climatic records if significant wind-eroded depositional hiatuses were inevitable within a severe wind environment. Unconformable contacts have been found during field survey in the top part of the stratigraphy in the Qaidam Basin, a prototypical endorheic basin in central Asia. To elucidate whether the sediment is continuous, we employed luminescence dating methods of feldspar pIR 200 IR 250 and quartz OSL to date sediments, including lacustrine sediments and salt crusts, from the Qarhan Playa that is the Quaternary depositional center of the Qaidam Basin. Various experiment tests, including preheat plateau, dose recovery, and residual dose, were conducted. The dating results show that the feldspar pIR 200 IR 250 can provide dependable ages with negligible residual doses. The pIR 200 IR 250 dating ages within the last glacial cycle reveal several environmental shifts. A Qarhan paleolake in Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 was demonstrated by the cluster ages of ∼140–80 ka of lacustrine sediments. The salt crust ages of 136 ± 10 ka and 97 ± 6 ka indicate that, before completely disappeared, the paleolake with shallow dish-shape depression had been dried up more than once, illustrating "shallow——dry——shallow" cycles. The playa in the eastern Qaidam Basin evolved mainly in warm periods, such as MIS 5 and MIS 1, supported by the salt crust ages of MIS 5 (136 ± 10 ka and 97 ± 6 ka) and MIS 1 (10 ± 1 ka and 0.6 ± 0.1 ka). Depositional hiatus in the last glacial cycle were identified by unconformable contacts in three sections between the lacustrine strata and their overlying playa strata, with corresponding age gaps of 158 ± 20–97 ± 6 ka, 131 ± 10–10 ± 1 ka, and 84 ± 7–0.6 ± 0.1 ka, respectively. In all the three sections the sediments for the whole of the last glacial period is missing, eroded by wind. This process should have occurred periodically during the glacial-interglacial cycles of the orbital global climatic changes. The results also show that hiatuses are common for endorheic basins on the Earth with age gaps of up to ∼100 ka, suggesting that robust chronology should be established before any climatic correlation due to severe wind erosion leading to episodic sediment accumulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Remote sensing observations and rover missions have documented the presence of playas, salts, and wind erosion landforms of lacustrine sediments on Mars. All of these observations suggest Mars was aqueous in its early history. However, abundant questions remain: How wet was the environment, what were the properties of the liquids and the possibility of ancient habitability, and what kinds of geological processes shaped the present landforms? To explore these unknowns, analogue studies can play a key role. In this contribution, we introduce the Qaidam Basin, Tibetan Plateau, northwestern China as a new and unique analogue site for studying the past aqueous and present arid environments of Mars. The Qaidam Basin, the highest and one of the largest and driest deserts on Earth, is located in a dry, cold, and high UV environment, similar to the surface of Mars. We demonstrate a variety of landforms and also their counterparts on Mars, which include aeolian dunes and yardangs, polygons, gullies, valleys, and fluvial fans. In the Qaidam Basin, various environmental regimes for the formation of linear and asymmetric barchans have been described. Saline lakes and playas representing different stages of lake evolution in arid environment are also present in the Qaidam Basin and provide promising cases for studying the habitability in Mars-like environments. Results for microorganism isolation suggest that halophiles are the most important fraction in the hypersaline sediments and this may shed light on studying present Martian habitability. Moreover, the remote but ready accessibility of the Qaidam Basin make it a potential site for engineering testing in regards to future martin exploration missions. We propose that the variety of exogenic and endogenic geomorphic types, lacustrine sediments, evaporite mineral assemblages and Mars-like extreme environments collectively point to the Qaidam Basin as an optimal [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]