Distribution and mineralogy of carbonate sediments on Antarctic shelves

• Main Authors: Judith Hauck, Dieter Gerdesa, Claus-dieter Hillenbr, Gerhard Kuhna, Gernot Nehrkea
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarctic Peninsula; Ross Sea; The Antarctic; Weddell; Weddell Sea; Antarc*; Antarctica; Sea ice
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.466.9354; http://epic.awi.de/23784/1/Hauck_et_al_2011_MARSYS_accepted.pdf

We analyzed 214 new core-top samples for their CaCO3 content from shelves all around Antarctica in order to understand their distribution and contri-bution to the marine carbon cycle. The distribution of sedimentary CaCO3 on the Antarctic shelves is connected to environmental parameters where we considered water depth, width of the shelf, sea-ice coverage and primary pro-duction. While CaCO3 contents of surface sediments are usually low, high (>15%) CaCO3 contents occur at shallow water depths (150-200 m) on nar-row shelves of the eastern Weddell Sea and at a depth range of 600-900 m on the broader and deeper shelves of the Amundsen, Bellingshausen and west-ern Weddell Seas. Regions with high primary production, such as the Ross Sea and the western Antarctic Peninsula region, have generally low CaCO3 contents in the surface sediments. The predominant mineral phase of CaCO3 on the Antarctic shelves is 1