《Holocene shelfcoastal sedimentary systems associated with the Changjiang RiverAn overview》.pdfVIP

Acta Oceanol. Sin., 2013, Vol. 32, No. 12, P. 4–12 DOI: 10.1007/s13131-013-0390-5 E-mail: hyxbe@263.net Holocene shelf-coastal sedimentary systems associated with the Changjiang River: An overview GAO Shu1* 1 Ministry of Education Key Laboratory for Coast and Island Development, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China Received 20 May 2013; accepted 18 August 2013 ©The Chinese Society of Oceanography and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 Abstract The fate of the terrestrial sediment supplied by rivers is a critical issue for understanding the patterns of Holocene environmental change on continental shelves. The East China Sea is a typical broad continental shelf with abundant sediment supply from large rivers. Here, a variety of sedimentary records were formed during the Holocene period. The sedimentary systems associated with these records have unique charac- teristics in terms of spatial distribution, material composition, deposition rate and the timing of deposition, which are related to active sediment transport processes induced by tides and waves, shelf circulations and sediment gravity flows. The sedimentary records thus formed are high resolution slices, i.e., each record has a temporal resolution of up to 100–10–1 a, but only covers a limited part of the Holocene time. In terms of the spatial distribution, these records are scattered over a large area on the shelf. Further studies of these systems are required to understand the underlying process-product relationships. In particular, the mid- Holocene coastal deposits on the Jiangsu coast, the early to middle Holocene sequences of the Hangzhou Bay, as well as the Holocene mud deposits off the Zhejiang-Fujian coasts, should be investigated in terms of the material supply (from both seabed reworking during the sea level rise event and river discharges), transport-accumulation processes, the sediment sequences and the future evolution of the sedimentary