Magnetic minerals are ubiquitous in estuarine, coastal, and shelf systems and potential recorders of geological, climatic and sedimentary processes. Sediments in the tropical sedimentary system of Goa have been extensively studied to reconstruct the paleoenvironment changes, sedimentation, and diagenetic history. However, a dedicated source-to-sink analysis of sediments delivered to the Arabian Sea (off Goa, India) using a magnetic and sedimentological approach was so far lacking. Such analysis is crucial for the development of environmental magnetism based mineralogical proxies. The present study sets out to identify environmental fingerprints of magnetic minerals originating from diverse sources and depositional environments, and assess their relative magnetic contribution to the bedload sediments in a complex tropical estuarine and marine shelf system of Goa, India. Compilation of magnetic and grain size properties of catchment rocks, riverbank soils, and bedload (fluvial, estuarine, marine) sediments of Goa, India showed large variations in the composition of magnetic mineral and distribution pattern. A clear N-S magnetic contrast in estuaries of Goa, India showing a decline in ferrimagnetic minerals content, followed by subsequent increase in high coercivity minerals and volume of coarser clastic size sediments suggest a marked change in sediment provenance. Grain size distribution of the studied estuarine sediments revealed two distinct patterns, which seems to be controlled by contrasting sediment provenance, changing detrital input, riverine morphology, and hydro-and sediment dynamics. A noticeable source-to-sink trend of loss of fluvial-derived fine silt-size bedload sediments and selective retention of coarser sediments within the south Goa estuaries can be reconciled with the efficient sediment partitioning regime driven by regional hydrodynamics, which restricted the settling of finer fluvial sediment fraction and therefore got regularly exported out to the Arabian Sea. Poor linkage between magnetic susceptibility and organic carbon content in estuaries of Goa suggest that early diagenesis had minimal impact on the bulk sediment magnetic signal. Our study provide full spectrum of magnetic properties of rocks, soils, and modern sediments, which helped in establishing the magnetic mineral inventory of the tropical estuarine system of Goa. Interpretation of rock magnetic and grain size data of bedload sediments provide crucial insights on sedimentary processes constraining the transport and depositional of magnetic particles and clastic sediment grain size fractions during their transit from source-to-sink. We demonstrate that magnetomineralogical approach presented in this study bears the potential and can be easily applied to trace the modern source-to-sink processes in other larger tropical sedimentary system around the world.
扫码关注我们
求助内容:
应助结果提醒方式:
