Riverine Carbon and the Sedimentary Record on the Continental Shelves.

摘要

The long-term goal of our research is to improve the understanding of the behavior of terrestrial organic carbon on continental shelves. More specifically this project seeks to link the rates, the routes and the fate of organic carbon to the continental-margin sediment dynamics. The field work is carried out in the northern Adriatic margin in the framework of the EuroSTRAFORM program. Our approach is to use the signature of the organic matter in order to: 1) trace the initial distribution of flood sediments on the shelf (spatial variability); 2) trace the physical and biological reworking of the flood layer (temporal variability); 3) discriminate between Po and Apennine riverine inputs; 4) identify flood layers in the stratigraphic records; 5) estimate the particulate organic carbon discharged during the 2000 flood event; 6) evaluate the overall organic carbon accumulation on the Adriatic continental shelf at monthly and 100-year time scales; 7) provide the overall partition between terrestrial and marine origin of the organic matter, based on a refined assessment of the end-member values of 13C.