Characterization of Bottom Sediments in the Río de la Plata Estuary

Abstract

ABSTRACT Moreira, D.; Simionato, C.G.; Dragani, W.; Cayocca, F., and Luz Clara Tejedor, M., 2016. Characterization of bottom sediments in the Rio de la Plata estuary. Bottom sediments and surface water samples were collected in the intermediate and outer Rio de la Plata (RDP) estuary, South America, during 2009–10, in six repeated cruises, with 26 stations each. Samples were processed for grain size and for water and organic matter content. The aim of this work is to analyze this new data set to provide a comprehensive and objective characterization of the bottom sediment distribution, to study the composition, and to construct a conceptual model of the involved physical mechanisms. Principal components analysis is applied to the bottom sediment size histograms to investigate the spatial patterns. Variations in grain size parameters contain information on possible sediment transport patterns, which were analyzed by means of trend vectors. Sediments show a gradational arrangement of textures: sand dominant...