Marine sedimentary record of Meltwater Pulse 1a along the NW Barents Sea continental margin

• DOI: 10.1007/s41063-015-0008-6
• Publication Date: 2015-11-20T13:18:00Z
• Authors: Renata Giulia Lucchi; Leonardo Sagnotti; Angelo Camerlenghi; Patrizia Macrì; Michele Rebesco; Maria Teresa Pedrosa; Giovanna Giorgetti
• Keywords: 13. Climate action; 14. Life underwater; 01 natural sciences; 7. Clean energy; 0105 earth and related environmental sciences

The upper continental slope of the Storfjorden-Kveithola Trough Mouth Fans (NW Barents Sea) contains a several m-thick late Pleistocene sequence of plumites composed of laminated mud interbedded with sand/silt layers. Radiocarbon ages revealed that deposition occurred during about 130 years at a very high sedimentation rate of 3.4 cm a−1, at about 7 km from the present shelf break. Palaeomagnetic and rock magnetic analyses confirm the existence of a prominent, short-living sedimentary event. The plumites appear laterally continuous and were correlated with the sedimentary sequences described west of Svalbard and neighboring glacial depositional systems representing a major event at regional scale appointed to correspond to the deep-sea sedimentary record of Meltwater Pulse-1a. We also present new sedimentological and geochemical insights, and multi-beam data adding information on the palaeoenvironmental characteristics during MWP-1a and ice sheet decay in the NW Barents Sea.