1 Revisiting the chronostratigraphy of Late Pleistocene loess-paleosol sequences 2 in southwestern Ukraine: OSL dating of Kurortne section 3 4 Viorica Tecsa 1,2, Natalia Gerasimenko 3, Daniel Veres 4,1, *, Ulrich Hambach 5, Frank Lehmkuhl 5 6, Philipp Schulte 6, Alida Timar-Gabor 1,2 6 7 1Interdisciplinary Research Institute on Bio-Nano-Sciences, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, 8 Romania 9 2Faculty of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania 10 3Taras Shevshenko National University, Kiev, Ukraine 11 4Romanian Academy, Institute of Speleology, Cluj-Napoca, Romania 12 5BayCEER & Chair of Geomorphology, University of Bayreuth, Germany 13 6Department of Geography, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany 14 15 * Corresponding author:
[email protected] 16 17 Keywords: loess chronostratigraphy, OSL dating, Last Glacial Cycle, SE Europe, Ukraine 18 19 Abstract 20 Due to the general lack of other high-resolution paleoclimate records, loess-paleosol sequences 21 are crucial archives for disentangling past climate variability in southeastern Europe. Here we 22 present results of a multi proxy sedimentological and geochemical investigation of Kurortne 23 loess-paleosol section from southwestern Ukraine, coupled with detailed optically stimulated 24 luminescence (OSL) dating. OSL investigations were carried out on quartz grains of different 25 grain sizes (4-11 µm, 63-90 µm and 90-125µm), using the single aliquot regenerative (SAR) 26 protocol. The OSL dating results are in line with previous findings on dating loess-paleosol 27 sequences along the Black Sea shore in Romania, as well as worldwide: (i) ages obtained on 28 different grain sizes are in agreement for equivalent doses of less than 200 Gy, whereas for 29 higher equivalent doses 4-11 µm ages underestimate the coarser fraction ages; and (ii) an 30 inverse correlation between dated grain size fractions and saturation characteristics is reported.