Surface sediment characteristics in the Drake Passage sector of the Southern Ocean

DOI

Understanding present-day sediment provenance and transport processes is crucial for studies about the dynamics of ocean circulation, as well as for paleoclimate reconstructions in the Drake Passage (DP), a key area for Earth's global oceanic circulation and climate during past and future. Based on a comprehensive set of surface sediment samples, we used spatial variations in grain-size distribution, bulk sediment mineralogy, silt and clay mineralogy across the entire DP region to elucidate the terrigenous sources and transport mechanisms. The statistical evaluation of these data identifies southern Patagonia (carbonate, illite, chlorite, feldspar and quartz) and the Antarctic Peninsula (chlorite, smectite, and amphibole) as the main sources for terrigenous sediments in the DP region. Different current systems are transporting the sediment material. Here, we provide a new, robust flow speed calibration for silt grain-sizes to enable the reconstruction of Antarctic Circumpolar Current (ACC) dynamics in the DP sector of the Southern Ocean. We correlated the sortable silt mean grain-size records of surface sediments with adjacent long-term current meter data. A clear bottom current speed pattern shows the variability of the ACC in the DP responding to the dynamics of ocean fronts, in agreement with modern observation.

Supplement to: Wu, Shuzhuang; Kuhn, Gerhard; Diekmann, Bernhard; Lembke-Jene, Lester; Tiedemann, Ralf; Zheng, Xufeng; Ehrhardt, Sophie; Arz, Helge Wolfgang; Lamy, Frank (2019): Surface sediment characteristics related to provenance and ocean circulation in the Drake Passage sector of the Southern Ocean. Deep Sea Research Part I: Oceanographic Research Papers, 154, 103135

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.907141
Related Identifier IsSupplementTo https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dsr.2019.103135
Metadata Access https://ws.pangaea.de/oai/provider?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=datacite4&identifier=oai:pangaea.de:doi:10.1594/PANGAEA.907141
Provenance
Creator Wu, Shuzhuang ORCID logo; Kuhn, Gerhard ORCID logo; Diekmann, Bernhard ORCID logo; Lembke-Jene, Lester ORCID logo; Tiedemann, Ralf ORCID logo; Zheng, Xufeng; Ehrhardt, Sophie; Arz, Helge Wolfgang ORCID logo; Lamy, Frank ORCID logo
Publisher PANGAEA
Publication Year 2019
Rights Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Representation
Resource Type Supplementary Publication Series of Datasets; Collection
Format application/zip
Size 5 datasets
Discipline Earth System Research
Spatial Coverage (-76.647W, -63.757S, -55.647E, -52.442N)
Temporal Coverage Begin 2016-02-24T22:16:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2016-04-03T02:42:00Z