SG06, a fully continuous and varved sediment core from Lake Suigetsu, Japan: stratigraphy and potential for improving the radiocarbon calibration model and understanding of late Quaternary climate changes

Abstract

The high potential of the varved sediments of Lake Suigetsu, central Japan, to provide a purely terrestrial radiocarbon calibration model and a chronology of palaeoclimatic changes has been widely recognised for the last two decades. However, this potential has not been fully realised since the only available long sediment core from the lake (‘SG93’) was extracted from a single bore hole and was therefore interrupted by gaps of unknown duration between successive core sections. In the summer of 2006, a new sediment core (‘SG06’) was recovered from the lake. Four separate boreholes were drilled and the parallel sets of cores recovered were found to overlap completely, without gaps between segments. This new record provides the ability to test existing atmospheric radiocarbon calibration models, as well as to assess the scale of inter-regional leads and lags in palaeoclimatic changes over the last Glacial–Interglacial cycle. Multi-disciplinary analyses from SG06 are still ongoing, but a reliable description of the sedimentary sequence needs to be provided to the wider science community before major outputs from the project are released, thereby allowing fully-informed critical evaluation of all subsequent releases of data based on the SG06 record. In this paper, we report key litho-stratigraphic information concerning the SG06 sediment core, highlighting changes in the clarity of annual laminations (varves) with depth, and possible implications for the mechanism of the climate change. We also discuss the potential of the SG06 record to meet the fundamental goals of the INQUA-INTIMATE project.