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Recently silica-mediated dissolution has been recognized as a potentially important factor in magnetic studies of marine and lacustrine sediments. Although direct evidence for the dissolution of magnetic particles in silica-rich environments is still lacking, the process is expected to produce changes in the magnetic grain-size distribution. This hypothesis can be tested using FORC diagrams, which provide detailed information about the magnetic grain-size distributions of small quantities of material. For the present study, four cores were investigated from Lake Tanganyika in East Africa, where high levels of dissolved silica are present. Large variations in both natural and artificial remanent magnetization intensities were observed during the initial paleomagnetic investigation of the cores. These variations in magnetic intensity could not be explained by simple dilution by inert silica in the sediment, suggesting that silica-mediated dissolution might be involved. To study this phenomenon, FORC diagrams were collected from zones of both high and low magnetic intensity. Results from the different zones clearly show that changes in the magnetic intensity are associated with changes in the magnetic grain-size distribution. In particular, zones with high silica content correlated with a depletion in fine-grained magnetic material, whereas zones with lower silica content showed no depletion. These results are consistent with the idea that silica-mediated dissolution results in the preferential removal of fine-grained magnetic material. The results of this study suggests that FORC diagrams are an effective way of determining the presence of silica-mediated dissolution in sediments.
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