Grain size and mineral variability of glacial marine sediments

Glacial marine sediment deposition varies both spatially and temporally, but nearly all studies evaluate down-core (∼ time) variations in sediment variables with little consideration for across core variability, or even the consistency of a data set over distance scales of 1 to 1000 m. Grain size and quantitative X-ray diffraction (qXRD) methods require only ≤ 1 g of sediment and thus analyses assume that the identification of coarse sand (i.e., ice-rafted debris) and sediment mineral composition are representative of the depth intervals. This assumption was tested for grain size and mineral weight % on core MD99-2317, off East Greenland. Samples were taken from two sections of the core that had contrasting coarse-sand content. A total of fourteen samples were taken consisting of seven (vertical) and two (horizontal) samples, with five replicates per sample for qXRD analyses and ∼ 10 to 20 replicates for grain size. They had an average dry weight of 10.5 ± 0.5 g and are compared with two previous sets of sediment samples that averaged 54.1 ± 18.9 g and 20.77 ± 5.8 g dry weight. The results indicated some significant differences between the pairs of samples for grain-size parameters (mean sortable silt, and median grain size) but little difference in the estimates of mineral weight percentages. Out of 84 paired mineral and grain-size comparisons only 17 were significantly different at p = < 0.05 in the post-hoc Scheffe test, all of which were linked to grain-size attributes.