Clay Mineral Characteristics and Provenance of Continental Shelf Sediments in Eastern Hainan Island since Middle Holocene
Tian Xu
Xu Fangjian
Wu Shuzhuang
Zhang Jin
Guo Chen
Dong Jiang
Abstract：The influence of Hainan Island has been ignored in the previous researches of sediment provenance in the continental shelf of the northern South China Sea.Therefore,the sediment provenances on the basis of lithology,grain-size,AMS14 C dat-ing,clay mineral analysis that were carried out for Core X2 located in the continental shelf of the Hainan Island in the South China Sea are discussed in the paper.The results show that Core X2 is separated into two stages,namely the upper one and the lower one.The lower one(Ⅰ,240-120 cm)is mainly composed of clay silt while the upper one (Ⅱ,120-0 cm)consists mainly of silty sand.Clay minerals in Core X2 mainly consist of illite and kaolinite,with associated chlorite and smectite.The comparison of clay mineral assemblages between sediments at Core X2 and other potential provenances indicates that predomi-nant illite and chlorite may have been originated from Taiwan and the Pearl River,whereas kaolinite may has been provided mainly by Hainan Island and the Pearl River;smectite was derived mainly from Leiqiong area.It shows that materials on Hain-an Island have certain influence on the continental shelf in the northern South China Sea.The coarsening of the sediment and the higher content of the kaolinite mean that Hainan Island provides more materials than other provenances in stage Ⅰ,which may have been resulted from climatic variation and enhancement from human activities since 4 ka.
Keywords：South China Seacontinental shelfgrain sizeclay mineralprovenancesediment
Publication Date：2015-01-01
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：8( 1497-1504 )