PROGRESS OF CHRONOLOGY RESEARCH FOR LOESS IN SHANDONG:PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS

Owing to the large amount of dust input from the exposed Bohai shelf during the glacier periods, the loess in Shandong region has quite different material sources from those on the Chinese Loess Plateau and other inland regions. The Shandong loess is a very important archive for climate and sea level changes in the coastal areas in orbital time-scales. However, it has not raised enough attention so far comparing to the loess at the Loess Plateau. Even though there have been increased input in recent years, they are still less than enough. As we are aware, chronology is the basis for paleoenvironmental reconstruction and geomorphologic studies and the major concern of geologists, it must be prioritized in the future research. After summarizing the published ages of Shandong loess, their reliability is analyzed and some problems about chronology of the Shandong loess proposed in this paper. We suggest that the chronology studies on Shandong loess should focus more on establishment of reliable chronological frameworks with optically stimulated luminescence dating (or combined with ²⁶Al /¹⁰Be dating) as the major method. A few important associated scientific questions and suggestions concerning Shandong loess are also proposed in this paper.