EGU2020-9062, updated on 08 Jan 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-9062
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Nanotephra in environmental archives – method development for single-particle multi-element fingerprinting in tephrochronology

Jan Schüürman1, Nathalie Tepe1, Christoph Daxer2, Jhy-Jaan Steven Huang2, Michael Strasser2, Frank von der Kammer1, and Thilo Hofmann1
Jan Schüürman et al.
  • 1University of Vienna, Centre for Microbiology and Environmental Systems Science, Department of Environmental Geosciences, Austria
  • 2University of Innsbruck, Institute of Geology, Austria

Nano-scale volcanic ash particles (nanotephra) are produced during explosive volcanic eruptions. They can travel laterally above the tropopause for thousands of kilometers before returning to Earth’s surface. Within a short time, they will aggregate, settle, and end up in sedimentary sinks, such as lakes and oceans, and might be used as a tephrochronological age marker. These ultra-distal tephra deposits can be highly diluted by geogenic or biogenic background sedimentation. Consequently, the identification of nanotephra in these environmental archives poses an immense analytical challenge. A new generation of time-of-flight mass spectrometers (TOF-MS) can deliver particle specific multi-element information providing the analytical prerequisite to tease out a signal of trace amounts of nanotephra among a majority of background nanoparticles.

Here, we present the first single-particle geochemical data of Eyjafjallajökull nanotephra, Iceland. The sub-micron particles were separated from bulk reference ash collected close to the eruption site and measured in a single-particle inductively coupled plasma TOF-MS. We tested their identification based on trace element heterogeneities in a mixture of tephra and sediment from Millstätter Lake, Austria, serving as a model archive deposition. We are developing this method to identify the source eruption of nanotephra deposited in lake sediment and thereby allow for better dating of the corresponding layer.

How to cite: Schüürman, J., Tepe, N., Daxer, C., Huang, J.-J. S., Strasser, M., von der Kammer, F., and Hofmann, T.: Nanotephra in environmental archives – method development for single-particle multi-element fingerprinting in tephrochronology, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-9062, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-9062, 2020.

This abstract will not be presented.