Evidence for millennial-scale interactions between Hg cycling and hydroclimate from Lake Bosumtwi, Ghana

DOI

The datasets include measurements of mercury, total organic, and inorganic carbon in sediment samples from core BOS04-5B, extracted from Lake Bosumtwi in 2004 as part of the ICDP Lake Bosumtwi Drilling Project. Lake Bosumtwi is the only natural lake in Ghana, western Africa (6°300 N, 1°250 W), and occupies a meteorite impact crater dated to 1.08 ± 0.04 Ma: one of the youngest and best-preserved impact craters on Earth. Focusing on the uppermost ∼ 47 m of the BOS04-5B sediment record, this data was generated to assesses whether major shifts in local hydroclimate produced measurable changes in how Hg has been transported to, and buried within, this system since ∼ 96 ka. Total Hg (HgT) in the bulk sediments of the core was measured using an RA-915 portable mercury analyser with a PYRO-915+ pyrolyser, Lumex, at the University of Oxford (UK). For this study, we analysed 165 samples spanning the composite depth interval 47.7 to 0 m, with an average temporal resolution of ∼ 0.6 ka between each sample (range: 0.01 to 5.85 kyr). Quantitative values for total organic carbon (TOC) and total inorganic carbon (TIC) content were measured on the same powdered sample material also analysed for Hg, using a Stroehlein Coulomat 702 at the University of Oxford (UK). Analytical reproducibility for this instrument was ≤ 0.2% based on repeat measurements, with a detection limit of ca. 0.1 %-0.2 %.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.981521
Related Identifier References https://doi.org/10.5194/cp-21-817-2025
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.981521
Provenance
Creator Paine, Alice R ORCID logo; Frieling, Joost ORCID logo; Shanahan, Timothy M ORCID logo; Mather, Tamsin A; McKay, Nicholas ORCID logo; Robinson, Stuart A ORCID logo; Pyle, David A; Fendley, Isabel M; Kiely, R; Gosling, William D ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2025
Funding Reference European Commission https://doi.org/10.13039/501100000780 Crossref Funder ID 818717 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/818717 Revealing hidden volcanic triggers for global environmental change events in Earth's geological past using mercury (Hg)
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Format text/tab-separated-values
Size 976 data points
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-1.410 LON, 6.506 LAT); Lake Bosumtwi, Ghana
Temporal Coverage Begin 2004-07-15T00:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2004-10-15T00:00:00Z