Rare earth elements in bottom sediments of major rivers around the Yellow Sea: implications for sediment provenance

Geo-Marine Letters - Tập 29 - Trang 291-300 - 2009
Zhaokai Xu1,2, Dhongil Lim3, Jinyong Choi1, Shouye Yang4, Hoisoo Jung5
1Department of Oceanography, Kunsan National University, Kunsan, Korea
2Key Laboratory of Marine Geology and Environment, Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China
3South Sea Research Institute, Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute, Geoje, Korea
4Laboratory of Marine Geology, Tongji University, Shanghai, China
5Marine Geoenvironment and Resources Research Division, Korea Ocean Research and Development Institute, Seoul, Korea

Tóm tắt

Rare earth elements (REEs) of 91 fine-grained bottom sediment samples from five major rivers in Korea (the Han, Keum, and Yeongsan) and China (the Changjiang and Huanghe) were studied to investigate their potential as source indicator for Yellow Sea shelf sediments, this being the first synthetic report on REE trends for bottom sediments of these rivers. The results show distinct differences in REE contents and their upper continental crust (UCC)-normalized patterns: compared to heavy rare earth elements (HREEs), light rare earth elements (LREEs) are highly enriched in Korean river sediments, in contrast to Chinese river sediments that have a characteristic positive Eu anomaly. This phenomenon is observed also in primary source rocks within the river catchments. This suggests that source rock composition is the primary control on the REE signatures of these river sediments, due largely to variations in the levels of chlorite and monazite, which are more abundant in Korean bottom river sediments. Systematic variations in ΣLREE/ΣHREE ratios, and in (La/Yb)–(Gd/Yb)UCC but also (La/Lu)–(La/Y)UCC and (La/Y)–(Gd/Lu)UCC relations have the greatest discriminatory power. These findings are consistent with, but considerably expand on the limited datasets available to date for suspended sediments. Evidently, the REE fingerprints of these river sediments can serve as a useful diagnostic tool for tracing the provenance of sediments in the Yellow Sea, and for reconstructing their dispersal patterns and the circulation system of the modern shelf, as well as the paleoenvironmental record of this and adjoining marginal seas.

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