Research Paper Applicability of a quartz OSL standardised growth curve for D e determination up to 400 Gy for lacustrine sediments from the Qaidam Basin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau Hao Long a, b , ZhongPing Lai a, * , QiShun Fan a, b , YongJuan Sun a , XiangJun Liu a, b a Luminescence Dating Group, Key Laboratory of Salt Lake Resources and Chemistry, Qinghai Institute of Salt Lakes, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Xining 810008, China b Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China article info Article history: Received 18 October 2008 Received in revised form 1 May 2009 Accepted 4 May 2009 Available online 20 May 2009 Keywords: Standardised growth curve (SGC) Quartz luminescence dating Lacustrine sediments Qaidam Basin Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau (QTP) abstract The standardised growth curve (SGC) for quartz OSL has recently been developed as a practical means to reduce measurement times when determining palaeodoses using quartz of aeolian sediments, especially loess and desert sand from the same section or the same geographical area. In the present study, we test the performance of SGCs for lacustrine sediments of three cores in the Qaidam Basin of the Qinghai- Tibetan Plateau (QTP) in China. A total of nine samples were collected (three samples from each of the three cores), and silt-sized (38–63 mm) quartz was extracted for the experiment. The results demon- strated that: (a) Nine samples display similar dose–response curves up to a regeneration dose of 600 Gy using single aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) protocol, suggesting the existence of a standardised growth curve for lacustrine sediments in the Qaidam Basin; (b) For samples with D e s of up to w400 Gy, the D e s determined by the SGC are in agreement with the D e s by the SAR protocol, suggesting that the SGC approach could be used for D e determination up to a dose of w400 Gy for lacustrine samples from the Qaidam Basin of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau in China; (c) The saturation dose for these samples is more than 600 Gy, and in the growth curve a linear growth part was observed in the high dose range of >200 Gy. Ó 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In recent years, optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of quartz grains from sedimentary deposits has been revolutionized by the development of a measurement sequence known as the single aliquot regenerative-dose (SAR) protocol (Murray and Wintle, 2000). Although the SAR protocol (Murray and Wintle, 2000, 2003; Wintle and Murray, 2006) is capable of determining equivalent dose (D e ) more rapidly than its multiple-aliquot predecessors, permitting the possibility of dating large numbers of samples that are needed for rigorous geomorphological interpretation, laboratory measure- ment time is still often a limiting factor. A standardised growth curve (SGC) has been tested recently as a practical means of reducing measurement times (Roberts and Duller, 2004; Burbidge et al., 2006; Lai, 2006; Lai et al., 2007; Telfer et al., 2008). The idea of the use of a SGC was proposed for the first time by Roberts and Duller (2004) when using the SAR protocol for D e determination. In SAR procedures, the OSL signal from the test dose (T x ) is employed to correct for sensitivity changes over a series of regeneration measurements (L x )(Murray and Wintle, 2000). Roberts and Duller (2004) argued that such a test-dose response can be potentially used as an inter-aliquot normalisation, and that normalising the luminescence signal (L x ) with the test-dose response (T x ) not only corrects for changes in luminescence sensi- tivity, but should also compensate for differences in natural signal intensity (L N ). When the normalized luminescence signal (L x /T x ) is multiplied by the size of the test dose (T D ) (in Gy), i.e. ((L x /T x )*T D ) which they termed ‘standardised luminescence signal’, they found that a SGC exists for different samples from different continents. However, recent results revealed different opinions regarding the existence of a SGC for OSL of quartz. Lai (2006) tested the use of SGC using silt-sized quartz (38–63 mm) for loess samples from the Chinese Loess Plateau, and concluded that there was a SGC for samples younger than 270 ka, while older samples (0.65– 2.5 Ma) showed slightly different growth curve shapes. Lai (2006) also demonstrated that the scatter for normalized OSL of natural doses in a group of aliquots was higher than that of any regeneration dose (except the zero dose); this implied that the * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: zplai@yahoo.com.cn, zplai@isl.ac.cn (ZhongPing Lai). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Quaternary Geochronology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/quageo 1871-1014/$ – see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.quageo.2009.05.005 Quaternary Geochronology 5 (2010) 212–217