A dataset comprising the burial rates of inorganic carbon, organic carbon, and total carbon in over the past century in Lake Qinghai, the largest lake on the Tibetan Plateau.

This dataset comprises the burial rates of inorganic carbon, organic carbon, and total carbon in over the past century in Lake Qinghai based on twenty-five cores. The inorganic carbon burial rate was determined by multiplying the mass accumulation rate by the authigenic inorganic carbon content, which was estimated using a mineralogical method that excludes allochthonous (watershed-derived) inputs. The organic carbon burial rate was calculated similarly, using the organic carbon content measured by an elemental analyzer (reference: Meng, X., Chen, X., Lin, Q., Liu, Y., Ni, Z., Sun, W., Zhang, E., 2023. Spatiotemporal patterns of organic carbon burial over the last century in Lake Qinghai, the largest lake on the Tibetan Plateau. Science of The Total Environment 860, 160449). The total carbon burial rate is the sum of the inorganic and organic components.