The dataset of carbonate, dolomite, and calcite contents in the Zhaojianchuan section, Chinese Loess Plateau

This dataset includes carbonate, dolomite, and calcite contents in the Zhaojiachuan, Chinese Loess Plateau. The dolomite, calcite, and carbonate contents of the samples were measured using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. For FTIR analysis, the powdered samples were oven-dried at 105°C for over 2 hours. KBr was used as a reference standard to eliminate background signals, and each sample was scanned 128 times to reduce noise. Details of these procedures were previously documented by Meng et al. (2015). To address the interference of calcite minerals on the characteristic band at 2626 cm-1 for dolomite, the calcite was initially removed from the bulk samples following the method outlined by Meng et al. (2015). Different acetic acid concentrations and reaction times were employed to remove calcite while preserving dolomite based on the calcite-dominated carbonate content in the loess. We employed calibration equations established for loess deposits in previous work (Meng et al., 2015) to quantify the dolomite and carbonate contents using FTIR data. The calcite content was calculated by subtracting the dolomite content from the carbonate content.