Riverine and wind-borne materials transferred from Patagonia to the SW Atlantic exhibit a homogeneous rare earth element (REE) signature. They match well with the REE composition of Recent tephra from the Hudson volcano, and hence this implies a dominance of material supplied by this source and other similar Andean volcanoes. Due to the trapping effect of proglacial and reservoir lakes, the lar...

For decades, heavy metals have been deposited into marine sediments as a result of anthropogenic activities. Depending on their bioavailability, these metals may represent a risk to benthic organisms. Dissolved interstitial water metal concentrations have been shown to be better predictors of bioavailability than sediment metal concentrations. In order to improve our understanding of metals bio...

A 100 cm long sediment sequence was recovered from Beaver Lake in Amery Oasis, East Antarctica, using gravity and piston corers. Sedimentological and mineralogical analyses and the absence of micro and macrofossils indicate that the sediments at the base of the sequence formed under glacial conditions, probably prior to c. 12 500 cal. yr BP. The sediments between c. 81 and 31 cm depth probably ...

Bacteria of the genus Thermoactinomyces form endospores with an extreme longevity in natural habitats. We isolated Thermoactinomyces sacchari from 9,000-year-old varved (annually laminated) sediment; thus, T. sacchari is probably one of the oldest known living organisms. More importantly, we tested and verified the hypothesis that there is a relationship between concentrations of dormant, viabl...

This study focused on the luminescence dating of sediments from Lake El’gygytgyn, a meteorite impact crater 100 km north of the Arctic Circle in northeast Siberia, formed 3.58 Ma ago. The sediment is principally eolian deposited in to a lake with nearly permanently ice. The fine-grained polymineral and quartz extracts taken from nine distinct levels from the upper 12.3 m of sediment core PG1351...

Introduction: While there is a broad consensus that the central mound in Gale crater is sedimentary in origin, there remains stark disagreement about the nature of the medium that transported and deposited those sediments, particularly if the dominant agent was wind or water. Results from the Curiosity rover indicate evidence for fluvial deposition of sediments on the crater floor [1-3]. But ho...

This research provides particle-scale understanding of PCB and PAH distribution in sediments obtained from three urban locations in the United States: Hunters Point, CA; Milwaukee Harbor, WI; and Harbor Point, NY. The sediments comprised mineral grains (primarily sand, silt, and clays) and carbonaceous particles (primarily coal, coke, charcoal, pitch, cenospheres, and wood). The carbonaceous se...

In this work, the uranium (U) content in sediment and soil samples collected near the Santos and São Vicente estuaries was determined using the fission track registration technique (SSNTD). The sediment and soil samples after oven-dried and pulverised were prepared in the solution form. About 10 microl of this solution was deposited on a plastic detector and irradiated at the IPEN-IEA-R1 (3.5 M...

The distributions, annual sedimentation and atmospheric deposition flux of heavy metals have been studied in sediments of the South Yellow Sea (SYS), in order to evaluate their levels and pollution status. The higher concentrations of heavy metals were generally found in the central part of the SYS, which may be associated with the organic matters due to their high affinity to the metals. Accor...

Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH) were determined in two sediment cores in urban Lake Bled (NW Slovenia). In surface sediments of the deep western basin, the total PAH concentration was 1150 ng g dry weight (dw), whereas in shallower, nearshore Zaka Bay the PAH concentration was 1900 ng g dw. Fourto six-ring PAH were the most abundant compounds, suggesting that most PAH in Lake Bled sedime...