Benthic foraminiferal assemblages from sediment core MSM45/19_2

The presented data originates from the 1306cm long gravity core MSM45-19-2 (58°45.68 N, 61°56.25 W, 202m water depth) taken during R/V Maria S. Merian cruise MSM45 in August 2015 at 202 m water depth on the northern Labrador Shelf, northeast Canada, northwest Atlantic. In order to fully understand t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Lochte, Annalena Antonia, Schneider, Ralph R
Format: Dataset
Language:English
Published: PANGAEA 2022
Subjects:
AGE
GC
Online Access:https://doi.pangaea.de/10.1594/PANGAEA.945744
https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.945744
Description
Summary:The presented data originates from the 1306cm long gravity core MSM45-19-2 (58°45.68 N, 61°56.25 W, 202m water depth) taken during R/V Maria S. Merian cruise MSM45 in August 2015 at 202 m water depth on the northern Labrador Shelf, northeast Canada, northwest Atlantic. In order to fully understand the dynamics that contributed to the establishment of modern Labrador Sea circulation, detailed reconstructions of the major paleoceanographic changes through the Holocene are critical. Therefore, this study aims to provide new information on bottom (i.e. subsurface) water mass composition as well as on changes in primary productivity and sea-ice conditions in the LC during the Holocene. Reconstructions are based on benthic foraminiferal assemblages. Foraminiferal assemblages were counted in 15–20 and 50-cm intervals between 0–200 and 200–1300 cm core depth, respectively. Sample resolution in the upper core section was increased because of lower sedimentation rates. Each sample contained about 20 mL of wet sediment that was extracted using two syringes of 1.5 cm diameter. Samples were wet sieved through mesh sizes of 1000, 100, and 63 μm and dried. When necessary because of large sample size, the dried samples were subsequently split using a splitter. Foraminifera of the 100–1000 μm fraction were analyzed on a picking tray (following Seidenkrantz et al., 2007). At least 300 specimens were counted in each sample to obtain statistically sound numbers. Species abundances are expressed as percentages of the entire fauna. Foraminiferal concentrations, which is the number of specimens found in 1 mL of wet sediment, were calculated for all samples except for eight samples in the upper core section that were added later to increase the sample resolution. Since the wet volume of the additional samples could not be sufficiently quantified, we could not calculate foraminiferal concentrations for these samples. Only benthic foraminifera are present throughout the core. A total of 33 species were identified comprising 13 ...