Developing sediment provenance discrimination tracers using major elements in East China Sea mud deposits

Abstract

Discriminating shelf sediment provenances using sediment trace metal and rare earth element (REE) concentration and isotope ratios and clay mineral contents has several unavoidable hurdles, such as the effect of sediment grain size on metal concentrations, ubiquitous inclusion of REE-rich heavy minerals in sediments, and meager and inconsistent compositional differences. Furthermore, to date, no study has analyzed and determined a convincing tracer that can differentiate between Huanghe (HH) and Changjiang (CJ) sediment provenances, especially quantitatively. In this study, we quantitatively discriminated the provenances of the southwestern Cheju Island mud deposit (SWCIM) in the northern East China Sea (ECS) shelf, using seven major elements (Si, Al, Fe, K, Na, Ca, and Mg), and further determined the spatial variations of the contributions from the HH and CJ rivers to the northern ECS sediments. The results indicate that the SiO2/Al2O3 and Fe2O3/Al2O3 ratios of the HH, CJ, and Korean (KR) river sediments can be considered as reliable tracers for differentiation of the northern ECS shelf sediment provenance. Furthermore, the quantitative contributions of HH, CJ, and KR to the northern ECS sediment budget were approximately 80, 20, and 0%, respectively. The systematic spatial variations of the HH and CJ river contributions to the sediment provenances in the study area, such as the significant contributions of the HH river in the northwestern part of the SWCIM and the CJ river in the southwestern part, support the availability and applicability of the Fe2O3/Al2O3 ratio as a sediment provenance discrimination tracer. We propose that these major element concentration ratios can be applied to distinguish other siliciclastic shelf sediment provenances.