This data publication contains the data sets of a study aiming to reconstruct environmental conditions during the Holocene in the upper part of the Kali Gandaki valley, Nepal. The data are for samples taken from paleosol sections in the Upper Mustang region (Menges et al. 2019). On these samples we measured the grain size distribution to gain information about the depositional processes, pollen data to reconstruct past vegetation, 14C isotopes in the humin fraction of organic matter for soil formation ages, and hydrogen isotopic composition on n-alkanes to reconstruct past hydrological conditions. This is complemented with optically stimulated luminescence data for additional depositional age information, surface water samples and modern soil samples to constrain modern hydrological conditions, and sediment concentration data to gain insights into erosion processes. The data was generated between 2013-02 and 2018-12. The data files are provided in Excel and tab-delimited text versions.
This data publication is supplementary to a study on the climatic controls on leaf wax hydrogen isotopes, by Gaviria-Lugo et al. (2023). The dataset contains hydrogen isotope ratios from leaf wax n-alkanes (δ2Hwax) taken from soils, river sediments and marine surface sediments along a climatic gradient from hyperarid to humid in Chile. In addition, for each sampling site the hydrogen isotope ratios from precipitation (δ2Hpre) from the grids produced by the Online Isotopes in Precipitation Calculator (OIPC) (Bowen and Revenaugh, 2003). Furthermore, for each sampling site we report mean annual data of precipitation, actual evapotranspiration, relative humidity, and soil moisture, all derived from TerraClimate (Abatzoglou et al., 2018). Also provide data of mean annual temperature and the annual average of maximum daily temperature derived from WorldClim (Fick and Hijmans, 2017). As a final climatic parameter, we also derived data of aridity index from the Consultative Group of the International Agricultural Research Consortium for Spatial Information (CGIARCSI) (Trabucco and Zomer, 2022). In addition to climatic variables, for each site we include land cover fractions of trees, shrubs, grasses, crops, and barren land. These land cover fractions were obtained from Collection 2 of the Copernicus Global Land Cover layers (Buchhorn et al., 2020) via Google Earth Engine.
For further comparison here we provide δ2Hwax compiled from 26 publications (see references) that reported both the n-C29 and n-C31 n-alkanes homologues from soils and lake sediments. For each sampling site of the global compilation, we provide δ2Hpre and the same climatic and land cover parameters as for the Chilean data (i.e., precipitation, actual evapotranspiration, relative humidity, soil moisture, aridity index, temperature, fraction of trees, fraction of grasses, etc.), using the same sources.
The data is provided here as one single .xlsx file containing 9 data sheets, but also as 9 individual .csv files, to be accessed using the file format of preference. Additionally, 5 supplementary figures that accompany the publication Gaviria-Lugo et al. (2023) are provided in one single .pdf file. The samples taken for this study were assigned International Geo Sample Numbers (IGSNs), which are included in the provided tables S4, S5 and S6.