Environmental Changes of Volcano Activity Recorded in Coral Reefs in the Southwestern Leizhou Peninsula

摘要

Coral reefs have recorded the environmental changes occurred in the adjacent regions of the southwestern Leizhou Peninsula during their growth process. Dominant activities relating to the growth of coral reef are fault activities, earthquakes, volcanic activities, etc. Quaternary volcanoes are very active in the northwest region of South China Sea especially southwest of Leizhou Peninsula, which have obviously controlled the growth of coral reef; Parts of the volcanoes make up of reef substrates, while the minority of volcanoes are exposed to form the reef islands. Volcanic activities would lead to a series of geochemical changes, and all these changes will be recorded by contemporaneous coral skeletons. According to the relative research, principal elements relating to volcanic activities are Al, Ti, Cu, Co, Mn, etc, most of which would get rich influenced by volcanic activities. Many researches on cores of massive corals indicate that volcanic activities manifested by chemical anomalies in coral skeletons consist well with those recorded in historical materials, thus suggest it is feasible to reconstruct historical volcanic activities according to geochemical changes in coral skeletons.