Quaternary Magnetic Stratigraphy of Deep-Sea Sediments in the Western North Pacific: Influences of Paleomagnetic Recording Efficiency and Lock-In Delay

Understanding past environmental changes in the western North Pacific is rather limited due to the general paucity of robust chronology for carbonate-lacking pelagic clay sediments. Here, we present a new magnetostratigraphy of Quaternary deep-sea sediments in the northern Mariana Basin. A comprehensive set of paleomagnetic, rock magnetic, and microscopic results reveal that paleomagnetic signals are mainly carried by detrital magnetic minerals of Asian eolian dust and volcanic origins. The volcanic materials, most likely from the Mariana Arc, are characterized by low coercivity (∼30 mT) interacting single domain (SD) and pseudo-SD grains, associated with abundant dendritic magnetic crystals/inclusions. This volcanic component is a suitable remanence carrier but is less efficient in recording geomagnetic intensity than the higher coercivity eolian component. The relative paleointensity record derived with minimum rock magnetic artifacts shows comparable patterns with global templates. At the Matuyama-Brunhes transition, a ∼2-cm remanence lock-in depth offset is identified from beryllium isotope records, and the estimated magnetostratigraphic age delay is small (∼8 kyr). Our results provide an improved understanding of remanence recording processes in carbonate-poor deep-sea clays and demonstrate magnetic stratigraphy as a valuable chronology in the western North Pacific region.