Alberto Garcia de Figueiredo

Sediment deposition, accumulation, and seabed dynamics in an energetic fine-grained coastal environment

Sedimentary processes on the continental shelf and shoreline northwest of the Amazon River mouth were investigated as part of A Multidisciplinary Amazon Shelf SEDiment Study (AmasSeds) during four field expeditions between 1989 and 1991. Periodic deposition and resuspension of seabed layers as much as a meter thick dominate sedimentary processes for most of the inner shelf and for the shoreface and foreshore north of Cabo Cassipore. Strata forming as a result of this process consist of decimeter-thick mud beds separated by hiatal (scour) surfaces. The volume of sediment resuspended seasonally from the inner shelf surface layer (SL) is of the same order of magnitude as the annual input from the river, indicating that resuspension is an important control on suspended-sediment distributions in shelf waters. Most resuspension from the SL occurs during February–May (the period of maximum wind stress), which is also the time of rapid deposition on the mudflats, suggesting that sediment resuspended from the SL could contribute to shoreface and foreshore accretion for the northern portion of the study area. In addition, some of the sediment resuspended from the SL is transported seaward periodically in the form of near-bottom fluid-mud flows. This results in non-steady-state input of certain particle-reactive trace metals, which is reflected in the occurrence of quasi-cyclic210Ph profiles in the foreset region of the subaqueous delta. As determined using228Ra/226Ra geochronology, sediment accumulation rates in this region are 10–60 cm y−1. Farther seaward, in the bottomset region, accumulation rates decrease and there is increased evidence of biological activity preserved in sedimentary structures. However, episodic (but reduced) sediment input from fluid-mud flows also extends to this region, affecting the fauna and fine-scale stratigraphy.

The geological record preserved by Amazon shelf sedimentation

Abstract A recent study of the subaqueous delta and coastal plain near the mouth of the Amazon River provides insight to the geological record created there and elsewhere. A compound clinoform structure is forming across the Amazon shelf. The uppermost portion is the shoreline, whose aggradation brings the modern sedimentary deposit to sea level and produces a deposit 5–10 m thick. It contains sediments accumulating primarily in shallow subtidal areas, intertidal mudflats and mangrove forests, and progradation occurs by overlapping of northward-extending mudcapes. Through these processes, the coastal plain has been widened by 10–100 km during the Holocene. The shoreline deposits are prograding across topset strata of the modern subaqueous delta, which is the lowermost and dominant portion of the compound clinoform structure. The subaqueous delta extends to a water depth of 70 m, with a depositional break between topset and foreset strata at 30–40 m. Advective sediment input to the foreset region causes high accumulation rates, which control the geometry and progradation of the clinoform structure. On time scales of 102−103 y, physical processes (e.g. waves, currents) have changed and the upper portions of the coastal plain and subaqueous delta have been eroded. One expression of this is a widespread unconformity recorded within late Holocene strata on the inner shelf. Over longer time scales (103−104 y) sea-level changes have led to more extensive erosion and only the lower 20 m of the compound clinoform structure is preserved, overlain by a transgressive sand layer. On other continental margins with different regional characteristics (e.g. more rapid subsidence) larger fractions of the clinoform structures could be preserved.

Importance of tropical coastal environments

On a global basis, a very large fraction (>50%) of the mass flux from land to the marine environment enters from tropical rivers. A broad range of processes active in the adjacent coastal ocean determines the fate of this material. The tropical setting causes many of the coastal processes to be fundamentally distinct from those operating in temperate and polar regions. Therefore, their operation cannot necessarily be understood by extrapolation from empirical observations at higher latitudes. Other coastal processes are influenced by the extremely large water, particulate, and solute discharges from tropical rivers. Further complexity is added by the diverse range of geographic settings through which tropical rivers flow and into which they empty. In summary, coastal—ocean processes in the wet tropics are: globally important, fundamentally different than at higher latitudes, and diverse in operation. Many recent advances have been made in the understanding of the tropical coastal ocean, and it is hoped these will continue into the future. Such understanding is important for predicting processes of river—ocean interaction and terrestrial fluxes to the global ocean, which affect and are affected by human populations. It also can be combined with knowledge of temperate and polar settings to provide a comprehensive understanding of the coastal ocean.

An extensive reef system at the Amazon River mouth

A novel Amazonian reef biome was discovered, encompassing large rhodolith and sponge beds under low light, low oxygen, and high POC. Large rivers create major gaps in reef distribution along tropical shelves. The Amazon River represents 20% of the global riverine discharge to the ocean, generating up to a 1.3 × 106–km2 plume, and extensive muddy bottoms in the equatorial margin of South America. As a result, a wide area of the tropical North Atlantic is heavily affected in terms of salinity, pH, light penetration, and sedimentation. Such unfavorable conditions were thought to imprint a major gap in Western Atlantic reefs. We present an extensive carbonate system off the Amazon mouth, underneath the river plume. Significant carbonate sedimentation occurred during lowstand sea level, and still occurs in the outer shelf, resulting in complex hard-bottom topography. A permanent near-bottom wedge of ocean water, together with the seasonal nature of the plume’s eastward retroflection, conditions the existence of this extensive (~9500 km2) hard-bottom mosaic. The Amazon reefs transition from accretive to erosional structures and encompass extensive rhodolith beds. Carbonate structures function as a connectivity corridor for wide depth–ranging reef-associated species, being heavily colonized by large sponges and other structure-forming filter feeders that dwell under low light and high levels of particulates. The oxycline between the plume and subplume is associated with chemoautotrophic and anaerobic microbial metabolisms. The system described here provides several insights about the responses of tropical reefs to suboptimal and marginal reef-building conditions, which are accelerating worldwide due to global changes.

Stratigraphic evidence of changes in Amazon shelf sedimentation during the late Holocene

Abstract Late Holocene sedimentation on the Amazon shelf was investigated using a combination of seismic, sedimentological, and geochronological methods. Piston cores collected in the subaqueous delta region during A Multidisciplinary Amazon Shelf Sediment Study ( AmasSeds ) penetrated a regionally traceable (1.25 × 10 4 km 2 ) seismic discontinuity, which corresponds to a dense relict-mud reflector overlain by acoustically transparent sediment. Distinct offsets in profiles of wet-bulk density, P-wave velocity, and 210 Pb activity are noted in cores at the reflector horizon (unconformity), signifying a past change in sedimentation conditions on the shelf. Bulk-sediment 14 C dating indicates net depositional conditions for the subaqueous delta from > 1800 yr B.P. to 700 yr B.P. and a net erosional phase from about 700 yr B.P. to 100 yr ago. Sedimentological evidence of the erosional phase includes lag deposits and burrows present at the unconformity surface in piston cores. The deposits above and below the unconformity are similar with respect to grain-size parameters and sedimentary structures, suggesting that environmental conditions during the two depositional periods were similar. According to 14 C dates of coastal deposits, the shoreline of Amapa State, Brazil served as a major depocenter of Amazon mud during the erosional phase on the shelf. 210 Pb geochronology indicates that the most recent phase of sediment accumulation in the study area commenced about 100 yr ago, resulting in rapid progradation of topset deposits and burial of relict strata. In the present environment, oceanographic and meteorologic processes cause along-shelf variations in sediment dispersal and depositional patterns, and about 1400 km 2 of the erosional relict deposits are still exposed at the seabed. The short time scales over which Amazon shelf strata respond to changes in the physical environment preclude the influence of relative sea-level cyclicity on recent sedimentation patterns. During the late Holocene, sedimentation and strata formation on the Amazon shelf are linked to fluvial, oceanographic and meteorologic processes that affect sediment supply, deposition and erosion.

Geoacoustic character, sedimentology and chronology of a cross-shelf Holocene sediment deposit off Cabo Frio, Brazil (southwest Atlantic Ocean)

The Cabo Frio region in the state of Rio de Janeiro, southeast coast of Brazil, is characterized by a local coastal upwelling system and converging littoral sediment transport systems that are deflected offshore at Cabo Frio, as a consequence of which a thick cross-shelf sediment deposit has developed over time. To investigate the evolution of this muddy deposit, geophysical, sedimentological and geochemical data from four sediment cores (3.8–4.1 m in length) recovered in water depths between 88 and 141 m were analyzed. The high-resolution seismic data show variable sediment thicknesses ranging from 1 to 20 m, comprising two sedimentary units separated by a high-impedance layer at a depth of about 10 m below the seafloor at the coring sites. According to the available age datings, the upper sedimentary unit is late Pleistocene to Holocene in age, whereas the lower unit (not dated) must, by implication, be entirely Pleistocene in age. The boomer-seismic reflection signal can be divided into three echo-types, namely transparent (inner shelf), stratified (middle shelf) and reflective (outer shelf), each type seemingly related to the local sediment composition. The upper 4 m of the upper sedimentary unit is dominated by silty sediment on the middle shelf, and by upward-fining sediments (silty sand to sandy silt) on the inner and outer shelf. The downcore trends of P-wave velocity, gamma-ray density and acoustic impedance are largely similar, but generally reversed to those of water and organic carbon contents. Total organic carbon contents increase with decreasing mean grain size, periodic fluctuations suggesting temporal changes in the regional hydrodynamics and primary productivity fuelled by the local upwelling system. The reconstruction of sedimentation rates in the course of the Holocene is based on 35 AMS age datings of organic material recovered from variable downcore depths. These range from a maximum of 13.3 cm/decade near the base of the inner shelf core (7.73–7.70 ka BP) to generally very low values (<0.11 cm/century) over the last thousand years in all cores. Over the last 6 ka there appear to have been three distinct sedimentation peaks, one between 6 and 5 ka BP, another between 4 and 3 ka PB, and one around 1 ka BP. Due to different time intervals between dates, not every peak is equally well resolved in all four cores. Based on the similar sedimentology of the inner and outer shelf cores, an essentially identical sedimentation model is proposed to have been active in both cases, albeit at different times. Thus, already during the last glacial maximum, alongshore sediment transport was deflected offshore by a change in shoreline orientation caused by the Cabo Frio structural high. The source of terrigenous material was probably a barrier-island complex that was subsequently displaced landward in the course of sea-level rise until it stabilized some 6.5 ka BP along the modern coast.

Geomicrobiology of cores from Suruí Mangrove - Guanabara Bay - Brazil

The aim of this work was to quantify the biopolymers associated to esterase enzymes and identify bacterial respiratory activity in four cores collected in Suruí Mangrove, Guanabara Bay - RJ. Biopolymer concentration was 1000 times lower than previously reported in the literature, indicating the need for creating and establishing eutrophication indicative rates and records compatible with tropical coastal systems. The biochemical representative relationships in the cores were equivalent to those from studies on coastal marine environments made in the Northern Hemisphere. The esterase enzymes in the sediment proved efficient in the mineralization of biopolymers, even with preferentially anaerobic metabolic physiology. Despite the lack of incipient geomicrobiological studies, the results highlighted the possible application of microbiology to a better understanding of geological processes.

Upper Quaternary deposits on the Sao Tomé deep-sea channel levee system (South Brazilian Basin): major turbidite versus contourite processes

Abstract This paper is an attempt to show how one may discriminate turbiditic and contouritic processes in the deposition of deep-sea accumulations. The case study is the Sao Tome deep-sea ‘channel levee’ system in the South Brazilian Basin. This system is elongated parallel to the margin contour, and was first interpreted as being controlled by contour current activity. Detailed analyses of 3.5-kHz profiles and piston cores allowed to demonstrate that the Upper Quaternary sediments are predominantly deposited by turbidite and hemipelagic–pelagic sedimentation processes. On the levee and the transitional area towards the deeper rise, frequent fine-grained turbidites, accounting for 25–45% of the entire depositional series, are interbedded with the hemipelagic–pelagic muds. In the channel, thicker and coarser turbidites (15%) are associated with debris-flows (20%). Deposit deformation in the form of slides, slumps and diapir-like structures largely affect the distal transitional area. Slight evidence of contour current activity only consists of some sediment wave fields and manganiferous-rich layers or some top-truncated sequences and foraminiferal sandy layers.

GEOMORFOLOGIA E SEDIMENTOLOGIA DA PLATAFORMA CONTINENTAL

RESUMO O capitulo considera, de forma condensada, as caracteristicas oceanograficas, oscilacoes glacioeustaticas e distribuicao sedimentar, como subsidio para explicar a morfologia e a sedimentologia presentes na plataforma continental da Bacia de Campos. Sao apresentados mapas da granulometria, teor de carbonato de calcio e morfologia da plataforma. A plataforma apresenta dois dominios bem distintos: um terrigeno e outro carbonatico. O sedimento terrigeno predomina na plataforma interna, ao passo que o carbonato, na plataforma externa. O dominio carbonatico e ampliado ate a plataforma interna a norte do Cabo de Sao Tome. Na plataforma, o sedimento de maior granulometria e carbonatico, enquanto os finos sao siliciclasticos. A plataforma continental e dividida em areas com as mesmas caracteristicas geomorfologicas, considerando rugosidade, formas de fundo e faciologia. A morfologia apresenta relacao intrinseca com a faciologia. Os fundos carbonaticos tendem a ser mais rugosos e preservam melhor os paleocanais, enquanto os sedimentos siliciclasticos apresentam uma morfologia mais suavizada.

Amostragem geológica na pesquisa mineral

Este artigo descreve o funcionamento e emprego de equipamentos de amostragem de sedimento ou rocha no fundo marinho com emprego na prospeccao mineral. Os equipamentos sao classificados de acordo com suas propriedades de amostragens. Desenhos e fotos ilustram os equipamentos, enquanto tabelas fornecem suas principais caracteristicas.