Radiocarbon dating on cold-water corals, grain size, Corg, and benthic foraminfera assemblage of two sediment cores from the Ionian Sea

DOI

Continuous sedimentary records from an eastern Mediterranean cold-water coral ecosystem thriving in intermediate water depths (~600 m) reveal a temporary extinction of cold-water corals during the Early to Mid Holocene from 11.4-5.9 cal kyr BP. Benthic foraminiferal assemblage analysis shows low-oxygen conditions of 2 ml l-1 during the same period, compared to bottom-water oxygen values of 4-5 ml l-1 before and after the coral-free interval. The timing of the corals' demise coincides with the sapropel S1 event, during which the deep eastern Mediterranean basin turned anoxic. Our results show that during the sapropel S1 event low oxygen conditions extended to the rather shallow depths of our study site in the Ionian Sea and caused the cold-water corals temporary extinction. This first evidence for the sensitivity of cold-water corals to low oceanic oxygen contents suggests that the projected expansion of tropical oxygen minimum zones resulting from global change will threaten cold-water coral ecosystems in low latitudes in the same way that ocean acidification will do in the higher latitudes.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.784414
Related Identifier https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr.2011.12.013
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.784414
Provenance
Creator Fink, Hiske G; Wienberg, Claudia ORCID logo; Hebbeln, Dierk ORCID logo; McGregor, Helen V ORCID logo; Schmiedl, Gerhard ORCID logo; Taviani, Marco ORCID logo; Freiwald, André
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2012
Funding Reference Seventh Framework Programme https://doi.org/10.13039/100011102 Crossref Funder ID 226354 https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/226354 Hotspot Ecosystem Research and Mans Impact On European Seas
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Language English
Resource Type Publication Series of Datasets; Collection
Format application/zip
Size 5 datasets
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (18.456W, 39.555S, 18.456E, 39.557N); Santa Maria di Leuca
Temporal Coverage Begin 2006-10-11T16:50:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2006-10-11T17:40:00Z