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River-plume sedimentation and 210Pb/7Be seabed delivery on the Mississippi River delta front

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Abstract

To constrain the timing and processes of sediment delivery and submarine mass-wasting events spanning the last few decades on the Mississippi River delta front, multi-cores and gravity cores (0.5 and <3 m length respectively) were collected seaward of the Mississippi River Southwest Pass in 25–75 m water depth in 2014. The cores were analyzed for radionuclide activity (7Be, 210Pb, 137Cs), grain size, bulk density, and fabric (X-radiography). Core sediments are faintly bedded, sparsely bioturbated, and composed mostly of clay and fine silt. Short-term sedimentation rates (from 7Be) are 0.25–1.5 mm/day during river flooding, while longer-term accumulation rates (from 210Pb) are 1.3–7.9 cm/year. In most cores, 210Pb activity displays undulatory profiles with overall declining activity versus depth. Undulations are not associated with grain size variations, and are interpreted to represent variations in oceanic 210Pb scavenging by river-plume sediments. The 210Pb profile of one gravity core from a mudflow gully displays uniform basal excess activity over a zone of low and uniform bulk density, interpreted to be a mass-failure event that occurred 9–18 years before core collection. Spatial trends in sediment deposition (from 7Be) and accumulation (from 210Pb) indicate that proximity to the river mouth has stronger influence than local facies (mudflow gully, depositional lobe, prodelta) over the timeframe and seabed depth represented by the cores (<40 years, <3 m length). This may be explained by rapid proximal sediment deposition from river plumes coupled with infrequent tropical cyclone activity near the delta in the last 7 years (2006–2013), and by the location of most sediment failure surfaces (from mass flows indicated by parallel geophysical studies) deeper than the core-sampling depths of the present study.

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Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Department of Interior Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, under the cooperative agreement M13AC00013, via the Louisiana State University Coastal Marine Institute program. We would like to thank the field support group of the Coastal Studies Institute of Louisiana State University for their invaluable help during field operations, as well as all others who assisted. We are grateful to all of the undergraduate students who performed laboratory analyses. Also acknowledged are Jeffrey Obelcz for helpful input, two reviewers for constructive assessments of an earlier version of this article, as well as the journal editors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Coastal Studies Institute, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA

    Gregory Keller, Samuel J. Bentley & Kehui Xu

  2. Department of Geology and Geophysics, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA

    Gregory Keller & Samuel J. Bentley

  3. Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA, 70803, USA

    Kehui Xu

  4. Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, 70148, USA

    Ioannis Y. Georgiou

  5. Department of Geological Sciences, San Diego State University, San Diego, CA, 92182, USA

    Jillian Maloney

  6. U.S. Department of the Interior, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, New Orleans, LA, 70123, USA

    Michael D. Miner

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Correspondence to Samuel J. Bentley.

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Keller, G., Bentley, S.J., Georgiou, I.Y. et al. River-plume sedimentation and 210Pb/7Be seabed delivery on the Mississippi River delta front. Geo-Mar Lett 37, 259–272 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-016-0476-0

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