中文摘要：

天然环境中的木质素仅来源于陆生维管植物，不存在于海洋生物体中，且在环境介质中具有较高的化学稳定性和抗降解能力，因而是一种良好的陆源有机物的生物标志物，目前已在土壤、河流、湖泊和海洋中的地球化学研究中得到广泛应用。本文回顾了近几十年来木质素作为生物标志物的研究成果，简述了木质素分析方法，讨论了木质索在有机物溯源和重建古环境等领域中的研究进展，分析了其应用中存在的问题并对今后的研究进行了展望。

英文摘要：

Lignin in natural environment is unique to vascular land plants and essentially ab- sent from marine organism, and has high chemical stability and resistance to microbial degra dation. Therefore, lignin is a good biomarker of land-derived organic matter and has broad application in geochemical studies of soils, rivers, lakes and marines. Based on the reviewing of the researches of lignin as a biomarker in the past decades, the analytical methods of lignin are briefly described, the recent progresses of its application in the fields of tracing the source of organic matter and reconstructing paleoenvironment are discussed the existing problems and prospects the future study analyzed this paper.