Provenance Evolution and Its Response to Sea Level Change in the South Yellow Sea since 1.0 Ma

Abstract

The sediments provenance of the South Yellow Sea is controlled by many factors such as sea level change, ocean circulation, and neotectonic movement. The short time scale sediments provenance changes in this region since the Holocene have been revealed well, and a unified understanding has been formed that the central muddy area in the South Yellow Sea is a mixed area of the Yellow River sediments and the Yangtze River sediments. However, the contribution of different rivers to the sediments of the South Yellow Sea since late Quaternary is still ambiguous. Through comparative analysis of several boreholes with precise annual data constraints in the central mud area, the process of sediments provenance change at different periods since the late Early Pleistocene (1.0 Ma) was reconstructed, and the coupling mechanism of sediments provenance change and sea level change was established. It is found that during the period from 1.0 to 0.88 Ma, the seawater entered the South Yellow Sea along the Yellow Sea trough from the southeast to north as a channel, and there were different phenomena at the same time in different regions. Since 0.88 Ma, the sea water has been advancing from east to west. In addition, the sediments in the western of Jeju Island are mainly from China, and the sediments in the eastern are mainly from the Korean Peninsula, which roughly coincides with the boundary between the silty area and the sandy area on the eastern of the South Yellow Sea. In the surface sediments, the boundary line between the Yellow River sediments and the Yangtze River sediments is approximately 33.4° N.