Sea-level changes in the Bohai Sea, northern China, constrained by coastal loess accumulation over the past 200 ka

Loess sequences are widely distributed in semi-arid regions around the world, and are sometimes also located in coastal zones. The accumulations of coastal loess provide a valuable record of both climate and sea-level changes. Here we report sedimentological and high sampling resolution luminescence dating evidence for such changes from two loess sequences from the Shandong Peninsula and Miaodao Archipelago near the coast of Bohai Sea in northern China. Both the quartz optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) and K-feldspar post-infrared IRSL (pIRIR290) signals show consistent and satisfactory luminescence characteristics up to ∼100 ka, while the K-feldspar pIRIR290 ages provide age control up to ∼200 ka and are in stratigraphic order. With this fully independent age model, our results reveal that coastal loess accumulation is episodic with a high variability in apparent accumulation rates. After comparing with global and regional sea-level records, we find that the intervals with high accumulation rates coincide with global low sea-level stages, and that the loess sedimentary hiatuses indicated by nearly zero or very low accumulation rates at one site mainly correspond to global high sea-level stages, indicating the dominant role of global sea-level changes on coastal loess accumulation in the study area. We therefore conclude that regional marine regression mainly occurred during MIS 6, and MIS 5b to MIS 2, with extremely low regional sea levels possibly around 150 ka, 70–60 ka and 37–24 ka, while high sea-levels occurred during MIS 5e–5c and MIS 1. This study implies that coastal loess deposits with a good chronology could be used to constrain the timing of regional sea level change.