Miocene Provenance Changes in Taiwan Caused by Southward Input of Sediments From East China Sea Basin

Abstract

The Cenozoic sediments in marginal basins of East Asia ultimately reflected coupling between the tectonics, landscape evolution, and drainage reorganization. Recently, the provenance of Miocene sediments in the East China Sea Basin (ECSB) and Taiwan has been in hot debate, and several models were proposed to interpret the provenance changes. Most of them are related to river reorganization in East Asia and highly relied on detrital zircon U-Pb dating. In this study, a large number of detrital zircon U-Pb ages of Miocene sediments from the ECSB, Taiwan region, and the potential source areas have been compiled for quantitative provenance analysis. The results suggested that all the early–middle Miocene sediments in Taiwan and the ECSB were closely linked to North China and the Korean Peninsula. Over 80% sediments in Taiwan were delivered from the ECSB whose sediments were predominantly contributed by North China and the Korean Peninsula (70%). However, for the late Miocene to Quaternary sediments in the ECSB, the contribution of the Yangtze River system was 72%, which indicates distinct reorganization of river networks and initial formation of the Yangtze River in the late Miocene. The quantitative provenance analysis together with southward environmental changes from dominantly fluvial sediments in the northern and middle ECSB to shallow marine sediments in Taiwan region suggested that the early–middle Miocene sediments of Taiwan were mainly sourced from the North China and the Korean Peninsula by passing the ECSB. Thus, these sediments in Taiwan region would experience the river–delta–shallow marine route from the ECSB to Taiwan region.

Origins of sediments and fluids in submarine mud volcanoes off Tanegashima Island, northern Ryukyu Trench, Japan

“…The illite is detrital in origin, supplied to the East China Sea from mainland China by the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers (Nittrouer et al, 1984;Aoki and Oinuma, 1988) and transported from the East China Sea by the Kuroshio Current (Yin et al, 1987;Aoki and Oinuma, 1988). If the source sequence was deposited during the Miocene, the East China Sea was not yet fully open during their deposition (e.g., Fu et al, 2022), and the illite in those sediments may have been transported directly from mainland China. Nonetheless, this variation in supply paths cannot explain the high clay mineral contents of the studied mud volcano sediments.…”

Strength and Stiffness Degradation Mechanisms of Stabilized/Solidified Sediments by Freeze–Thaw Cycles

“…A big amount of dredged sediments from oceans, lakes, rivers, and ditches for navigation and environmental purposes have been disposed in oceans or on land annually (Pinto et al, 2011;Park et al, 2016). These disposed sediments have brought environmental pollutions and been limited or prohibited by many countries and regions gradually (Pinto et al, 2011;Zentar et al, 2012;Fu et al, 2022). Meanwhile, solidification/stabilization technology used worldwide to improve weak soils by mixing solidification additives into weak soils is effectively applied for large-scale resource utilization of dredged sediments (Chiang et al, 2016;Cerny et al, 2017;Wu et al, 2018;Zentar et al, 2021;Guo et al, 2022;Han et al, 2022).…”