Testing the Utility of Geochemical Proxies to Reconstruct Holocene Coastal Environments and Relative Sea Level
A Case Study from Hungry Bay, Bermuda
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6095730 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Andrew C Kemp, Christopher H Vane (0000-0002-8150-3640), Nicole S Khan (0000-0002-9845-1103), Joanna C Ellison, Jc Ellison (0000-0003-0692-8347), Simon E Engelhart (0000-0002-4431-4664), Ben Horton (0000-0001-9245-3768), Benjamin P Horton, Daria Nikitina (0000-0003-4178-5118), Struan R Smith (0000-0002-3078-0015), Lisa J Rodrigues (0000-0002-0973-0451), Ryan P Moyer (0000-0002-4904-5520, Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2019 |
| Volume | 5 |
| Publication date | 2019-02-05 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Open Quaternary (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2055-298X • E-ISSN: 2055-298X |
| Publisher | Ubiquity Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.5334/oq.49 |
| OpenAlex | W2911936634 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 63 |
On low-lying, tropical and sub-tropical coastlines freshwater marshes may be replaced by salt-tolerant \nmangroves in response to relative sea-level rise. Pollen analysis of radiocarbon-dated sediment cores \nshowed that such a change occurred in Hungry Bay, Bermuda during the late Holocene. This well-established paleoenvironmental trajectory provides an opportunity to explore if geochemical proxies (bulk-sediment δ13C and Rock-Eval pyrolysis) can reconstruct known environmental changes and relative sea level. \nWe characterized surface sediment from depositional environments in Bermuda (freshwater wetlands, \nsaline mangroves, and wrack composed of Sargassum natans macroalgae) using geochemical measurements \nand demonstrate that a multi-proxy approach can objectively distinguish among these environments. \nHowever, application of these techniques to the transgressive sediment succession beneath Hungry Bay \nsuggests that freshwater peat and mangrove peat cannot be reliably distinguished in the sedimentary \nrecord, possibly because of post-depositional convergence of geochemical characteristics on decadal to \nmulti-century timescales and/or the relatively small number of modern samples analyzed. Sediment that \nincludes substantial contributions from Sargassum is readily identified by geochemistry, but has a limited \nspatial extent. Radiocarbon dating indicates that beginning at –700 CE, episodic marine incursions into \nHungry Bay (e.g., during storms) carried Sargassum that accumulated as wrack and thickened through \nrepeated depositional events until ~300 CE. It took a further ~550 years for a peat-forming mangrove \ncommunity to colonize Hungry Bay, which then accumulated sediment rapidly, but likely out of equilibrium \nwith regional relative sea-level rise
Bay · Geochemistry · Holocene · Mangrove · Peat · Radiocarbon dating · Sea level · Sediment · Sedimentary depositional environment · Sedimentary rock · Wetland · Coastal wetland ecosystem dynamics · Geological formations and processes · Geology and Paleoclimatology Research · Ecology · Geology · Oceanography · Paleontology
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| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,5 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2022 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |