An outline of geochemical proxies used on marine sediments deposited during the Quaternary Period

Banerji, Upasana S.; Batuk Joshi, Kumar; Pandey, Laxmi; Prakash Dubey, Chandra

Abstract

The sediments have been a ubiquitous archive for paleoclimate reconstruction while the marine sediments are considered to be serene and mostly undisturbed from anthropogenic encroachments. Unlike continental records, the deep-sea sediments elucidated the evidence of at least 50 glacial and interglacial stages during the Quaternary period and thus proved its applicability in quaternary climate reconstruction. The geochemical variations in the marine sediments are often used as a proxy to decode the past productivity, redox, weathering and provenance changes as a function of past climate and oceanographic perturbations. The geochemical behavior of the elements in the sedimentary environment primarily relies on ionic potential along with redox potential and pH which leads to mobility and enrichment of selected elements and thus acting as potential evidence for ambient temporal changes. The present chapter aims to provide an overview of frequently used geochemical proxies and their applicability. Further, the chapter also tries to provide the significance of statistical and machine learning approaches to the geochemical datasets in understanding the climatic processes that led to changes in the geochemical variability.

• Online Publication Date: Nov 3, 2022
• Publication Date: Nov 3, 2022
• Deposit Date: Jun 2, 2023
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Pages: 1-35
• Series Title: Integrated Quaternary Stratigraphy
• Series ISSN: 2468-5178
• Book Title: Stratigraphy & Timescales
• Chapter Number: 1
• ISBN: 978-0-323-98913-8
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.sats.2022.09.002