A Coastal Yucatan Sinkhole Records Intense Hurricane Events

Abstract

ABSTRACT Brown, A.L.; Reinhardt, E.G.; van Hengstum, P.J., and Pilarczyk, J.E., 2014. A coastal Yucatan sinkhole records intense hurricane events. The potential of tropical sinkholes as archives for historical hurricane events has yet to be fully explored. This study uses high-resolution (1-cm interval) particle-size analysis to examine two sediment push cores from Laguna Chumkopo, located on the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico. Core CKC1 (62 cm) was collected from the base of a deep sinkhole located in Laguna Chumkopo at −79.9 m (msl), while the second core, CKC2 (93 cm), was collected from the shallow peripheral margin at −6.4 m (msl). Two coarse fining upward sequences (12 to 35 cm, 46 to 62 cm) in CKC1 had mean particle sizes of approximately 1.5 ϕ (medium sand) with intervening intervals of lime mud (<4 ϕ). Measured 137Cs activity in the bulk sediment (n = 15) and radiocarbon dating (n = 3) using bomb-carbon calibration determined that the lower coarse unit was deposited in the 1960s (after September 1957 ...