Grain size-shape distributions of aeolian sediments in the Roer Valley Graben

Samples of aeolian sediment were recovered from 7 localities in the Southern Netherlands (Roer Valley Graben). During the Weichselian, aeolian sediments were deposited in a northern sandy (fluvio-) aeolian belt and a parallel southern loess belt that spanned from the UK to Russia. The Southern Netherlands lie in the overlapping region of these two 'belts'. The data in the excel file belong to samples ranging in age between ~60 and 10 ka. - Pre-treatment of sediment samples Sediment samples used for grain size and shape analysis (~1 g of sand, 0.2 g of silt) were pre-treated using 5 ml H2O2 to remove organics and 5 ml HCl to dissolve carbonates. In addition, charged particles were dispersed using 300 mg Na4P2O7 ·10H2O (Konert and Vandenberghe, 1997). - Dynamic image analysis and data processing Dynamic image analysis (DIA) was carried out to obtain sediment grain size and grain shape data of the 314 samples from Best, Uden and Bakel, using a Sympatec Qicpic dynamic image analyser. We measured the 13 – 1600 μm fraction of the sediment following the measuring and image processing strategy described in Van Hateren et al. (2020). Particle size is given by the area-equivalent diameter (D2d) and the shape is described by convexity (Con), representing the irregularity of the particle shapes. Size-shape distributions (SSDs) are constructed from these parameters following the method of Van Hateren et al. (2020). - Laser diffraction grain-size analysis Part of the measurements were performed before the DIA method was conceived. These samples were therefore only analysed on grain size using laser diffraction analysis (LDA; Sympatec Helos). This applies to the cores (B51B0303, B51B0302 and B45D0154) and the initial measurements of samples from site Bakel, yielding a total of 383 samples. References: Konert, M., & Vandenberghe, J. F. (1997). Comparison of laser grain size analysis with pipette and sieve analysis: a solution for the underestimation of the clay fraction. Sedimentology, 44(3), 523-535. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-3091.1997.d01-38.x. Van Hateren, J. A., van Buuren, U., Arens, S. M., Van Balen, R. T., & Prins, M. A. (2020). Identifying sediment transport mechanisms from grain size-shape distributions, applied to aeolian sediments. Earth Surface Dynamics, 8(2), 527-553. https://doi.org/10.5194/esurf-8-527-2020.