The late quaternary paleoenvironment of Chile as seen from marine archives

The Chilean margin provides a «natural laboratory» for the analysis of interactions between climate, geol¬ ogy, oceanography. and Sedimentation processes due to its extraordinary latitudinal gradients in environ¬ mental and geological settings such as topography, climate, tectonics, volcanic activity, oceanography, and onshore geology. North to south changes in topogra¬ phy are obvious from the comparison of latitudinal elevation transects from the coast (or even from the Peru-Chile Trench) towards the high Andes. High¬ est elevation contrasts are found in the northern part of Chile, where the Andes reach elevations of up to 7000 m asl (Figure 1). In combination with the PeruChile Trench caused by the subduction of the Nazca plate underneath the South American one, spectacular topographic differences of up to about 15 km resulted, which gradually decreased southwards. These exceptional topographic differences obviously result in large denudation rates and, as a consequence. high sediment supply to the Continental margin off northern Chile is to be expected. Besides this, the environmental setting on the mainland of Chile exhibits spectacular gradients in preeipitation from the hyperarid Atacama Desert in