%0 Journal Article
%A Santisteban Navarro, Juan Ignacio
%A Mediavilla López, Rosa María
%A López Pamo, Enrique
%A Dabrio González, Cristino José
%A Ruiz Zapata, María Blanca
%A Gil García, María Elena
%A Castaño Castaño, Silvino
%A Martínez Alfaro, Pedro Emilio
%T Loss on ignition: a qualitative or quantitative method for organic matter andcarbonate mineral content in sediments?
%D 2004
%@ 0921-2728
%U https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/49367
%X Since the publication of the paper of Dean (1974), loss on ignition (LOI) has been widely used as a methodto estimate the amount of organic matter and carbonate mineral content (and indirectly of organic andinorganic carbon) in sediments. The relationships between LOI at 550 ºC (LOI550) and organic carbon(OC) content and between LOI at 950 ºC (LOI950) and inorganic carbon (IC) content are currently acceptedas a standard. However, the comparison of 150 analyses of samples of diverse lithologies, collectedfrom a single core, reveals that these relationships are affected by sediment composition (presence of clays,salts, and the variable content of organic carbon). This results in an incremental error on the estimation ofcarbon content from LOI values that invalidates the use of LOI values as a quantitative method forestimating carbon content. Conversely, the general trends of LOI550 and LOI950 show a good correlationwith carbon content (both organic and inorganic) allowing use of LOI as a qualitative test for carboncontent. Similarly, in our case, LOI at 105 ºC (LOI105) is a good qualitative proxy for the trends in gypsumcontent.
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