A single procedure for the accurate and precise quantification of the rare earth elements, Sc, Y, Th and Pb in dust and peat for provenance tracing in climate and environmental studies

The geochemical provenancing of atmospheric dust deposited in terrestrial archives such as peat bogs using trace elements is central to the study of atmospheric deposition over the continents and at the heart of many climate and environmental studies. The use of a single digestion method on all sample types involved in such a study (dust archive and sources) minimizes the contribution of the total analytical error when comparing sample compositions and attributing a source to the deposited dust. To date, this factor is limiting progress in geographical areas where the compositional variations between the sources and within the archive are small. Here, seven microwave and hot plate digestion methods were tested on rock, soil and plant reference materials to establish a unique method optimizing precision and accuracy in all sample types. The best results were obtained with a hot plate closed-vessel digestion with 2 ml HF and 0.5 ml HNO3 for 0.1 g of sample, which allowed the precise, accurate and low blank quantification of the trace elements La–Yb, Sc, Y, Th and Pb by ICP-MS. This method was tested in a climate study in central Asia and temporal changes in the dominant dust source were for the first time successfully linked to changes in atmospheric circulation patterns above this region.