Climate proxies for the last 17.3 ka from Lake Hazar (Eastern Anatolia), extracted by independent component analysis of mu-XRF data

The elemental composition of lake sediment cores is often the result of several independent processes. In this study we attempt to extract statistically independent climate related signals from mu-XRF multi element data of a core drilled from Lake Hazar in Eastern Anatolia, using the independent component analysis (ICA) method. In addition, we analysed ostracod shells for oxygen and carbon isotopes. The ICA method has advantages over traditional dimension reduction methods, such as principal component analysis or factor analysis, because it is based on maximal statistical independence rather than uncorrelatedness, where independence is a stronger property.