Thickness of marine Holocene sediment in the Gulf of Trieste (northern Adriatic Sea)

Novak, Ana; Busetti, Martina; Zgur, F.; Baradello, Luca; Babich, Alberto; Cova, Andrea; Gordini, Emiliano; Romeo, Roberto; Tomini, Isabella; Poglajen, Sašo; Diviacco, Paolo; Vrabec, Marko

doi:10.5194/essd-10-1077-2018

Cited by 35 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…Most terrigenous muds are deposited as a belt along the western coast, where they accumulate at annual rates locally exceeding 1 cm/year (Palinkas and Nittrouer 2007;Tesi et al 2011;Albano et al 2017). In contrast, the eastern karstdominated coast is sediment starved (Colantoni and Mencucci 2010) and the Holocene marine sedimentary cover in the southern Gulf of Trieste also tends to be very thin (Trobec et al 2018).…”

Section: Study Area and Sampling Stationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing Origin and Collapse of Holocene Benthic Baseline Communities in the Northern Adriatic Sea

Gallmetzer

Haselmair

Tomášových

et al. 2019

Palaios

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The shallow northern Adriatic Sea has a long history of anthropogenic impacts that reaches back many centuries. While the effects of eutrophication, overfishing, pollution, and trawling over recent decades have been extensively studied, the major ecological turnovers during the Holocene as a whole remain poorly explored. In this study, we reconstruct ecological baselines defining benthic ecosystem composition prior to major anthropogenic changes at four stations characterized by low sedimentation and millennial-scale time averaging of molluscan assemblages. We discriminate between natural and anthropogenic drivers based on (1) stratigraphic changes in the composition of molluscan communities observed in sediment cores and (2) changes in concentrations of heavy metals, pollutants, and organic enrichment. The four 1.5-m long sediment cores reach back to the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary, allowing for a stratigraphic distinction of the major sea-level phases of the Holocene. During the transgressive phase and maximum flooding, sea-level and establishment of the modern circulation pattern determined the development of benthic communities in shallow-water, vegetated habitats with epifaunal biostromes and, in deeper waters, with bryozoan meadows. After sea-level stabilization, the composition of these baseline communities remained relatively uniform and started to change markedly only with the intensification of human impacts in the late highstand, leading to a dominance of infauna and a decline of epifauna at all sites. This profound ecological change reduced species richness, increased the abundance of infaunal suspension feeders, and led to a decline of grazers and deposit feeders. We suggest that modern soft-bottom benthic communities in the northern Adriatic Sea today do not show the high geographic heterogeneity in composition characteristic of benthos prior to anthropogenic influences.

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Section: Study Area and Sampling Stationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Tracing Origin and Collapse of Holocene Benthic Baseline Communities in the Northern Adriatic Sea

Gallmetzer

Haselmair

Tomášových

et al. 2019

Palaios

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“…The post-LGM sea-level rise induced significant changes in the sedimentary environments of the northern Adriatic Sea with terrestrial environments transitioning in paralic and later shallow marine environments [22,[42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56]. In the Gulf of Trieste, where our study area is located (Figure 1), the Late Pleistocene alluvial plain transitioned into a paralic environment until open marine conditions finally prevailed approximately 10,000 years ago [22,42,44,45,[55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64].…”

Section: Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The hinterland of the Bay of Koper is composed of Eocene turbidites (flysch) comprising interbedded sandstones and marlstones, which are overlain by Quaternary alluvial and paralic sediments in the valleys of Rižana and Badaševica (Figure 1b; [65,66]). Offshore the Eocene succession is unconformably overlain by Quaternary terrestrial and paralic sediments topped by Holocene marine sediments [55,56,59,62,[67][68][69][70][71]. The Quaternary succession in the Bay of Koper, which was recognized as a submerged fluvial valley of the Rižana river (Figure 1b, [68][69][70][71]), is up to a few tens of meters thick and is composed of a lower alluvial part and an upper paralic part; however, alternations of terrestrial and paralic sedimentary environments have also been observed [68,72].…”

Section: Settingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sound Velocity in a Thin Shallowly Submerged Terrestrial-Marine Quaternary Succession (Northern Adriatic Sea)

Novak

Šmuc

Poglajen³

et al. 2020

Water

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Estimating sound velocity in seabed sediment of shallow near-shore areas submerged after the Last Glacial Maximum is often difficult due to the heterogeneous sedimentary composition resulting from sea-level changes affecting the sedimentary environments. The complex sedimentary architecture and heterogeneity greatly impact lateral and horizontal velocity variations. Existing sound velocity studies are mainly focused on the surficial parts of the seabed sediments, whereas the deeper and often more heterogeneous sections are usually neglected. We present an example of a submerged alluvial plain in the northern Adriatic where we were able to investigate the entire Quaternary sedimentary succession from the seafloor down to the sediment base on the bedrock. We used an extensive dataset of vintage borehole litho-sedimentological descriptions covering the entire thickness of the Quaternary sedimentary succession. We correlated the dataset with sub-bottom sonar profiles in order to determine the average sound velocities through various sediment types. The sound velocities of clay-dominated successions average around 1530 m/s, while the values of silt-dominated successions extend between 1550 and 1590 m/s. The maximum sound velocity of approximately 1730 m/s was determined at a location containing sandy sediment, while the minimum sound velocity of approximately 1250 m/s was calculated for gas-charged sediments. We show that, in shallow areas with thin Quaternary successions, the main factor influencing average sound velocity is the predominant sediment type (i.e. grain size), whereas the overburden influence is negligible. Where present in the sedimentary column, gas substantially reduces sound velocity. Our work provides a reference for sound velocities in submerged, thin (less than 20 m thick), terrestrial-marine Quaternary successions located in shallow (a few tens of meters deep) near-shore settings, which represent a large part of the present-day coastal environments.

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“…The volumes were estimated from the digital map of the thickness of each deposit ( Fig. 5) (Correggiari et al, 2013(Correggiari et al, , 2016Trobec et al, 2018).…”

Section: Thickness and Volume Computationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Extensive interventions of beach nourishment based on the massive use of sediments have been carried out in northern and southern Europe and across the United States to tackle problems of erosion (Finkl and Walker, 2005;Radermacher et al, 2017;Pranzini, 2018;van Egmond et al, 2018). In some cases, these interventions were realised using tens of millions of cubic metres of sand (Richards and Nicholls, 2009).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Data set of submerged sand deposits organised in an interoperable spatial data infrastructure (Western Sardinia, Mediterranean Sea)

Brambilla

Conforti

Simeone

et al. 2019

Earth Syst. Sci. Data

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Abstract. The expected global sea level rise by the year 2100 will determine adaptation of the whole coastal system and the land retreat of the shoreline. Future scenarios coupled with the improvement of mining technologies will favour increased exploitation of sand deposits for nourishment, especially for urban beaches and sandy coasts with lowlands behind them. The objective of the work is to provide useful tools to support planning in the management of sand deposits located on the continental shelf of Western Sardinia (western Mediterranean Sea). The work has been realised through the integration of data and information collected during several projects. Available data consist of morpho-bathymetric data (multibeam) associated with morphoacoustic (backscatter) data, collected in the depth range −25 to −700 m. Extensive coverage of high-resolution seismic profiles (Chirp 3.5 kHz) has been acquired along the continental shelf. Also, surface sediment samples (Van Veen grab and box corer) and vibrocorers have been collected. These data allow mapping of the submerged sand deposits with the determination of their thickness and volume and their sedimentological characteristics. Furthermore, it is possible to map the seabed geomorphological features of the continental shelf of Western Sardinia. All the available data (https://doi.org/10.1594/PANGAEA.895430) have been integrated and organised in a geodatabase implemented through a GIS and the software suite Geoinformation Enabling ToolkIT StarterKit® (GET-IT), developed by researchers of the Italian National Research Council for RITMARE project. GET-IT facilitates the creation of distributed nodes of an interoperable spatial data infrastructure (SDI) and enables unskilled researchers from various scientific domains to create their own Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standard services for distributing geospatial data, observations and metadata of sensors and data sets. Data distribution through standard services follows the guidelines of the European Directive INSPIRE (DIRECTIVE 2007/2/EC); in particular, standard metadata describe each map level, containing identifiers such as data type, origin, property, quality, processing processes to foster data searching and quality assessment.

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Thickness of marine Holocene sediment in the Gulf of Trieste (northern Adriatic Sea)

Cited by 35 publications

References 24 publications

Tracing Origin and Collapse of Holocene Benthic Baseline Communities in the Northern Adriatic Sea

Tracing Origin and Collapse of Holocene Benthic Baseline Communities in the Northern Adriatic Sea

Sound Velocity in a Thin Shallowly Submerged Terrestrial-Marine Quaternary Succession (Northern Adriatic Sea)

Data set of submerged sand deposits organised in an interoperable spatial data infrastructure (Western Sardinia, Mediterranean Sea)

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