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Base of brackish-water mud as key regional stratigraphic marker of mid-Holocene marine flooding of the Baltic Sea Basin

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Abstract

Many modern epicontinental seas were dry land before their marine flooding by the mid-Holocene glacioeustatic sea-level rise, whereas the Baltic Sea Basin was covered by a huge postglacial lake. This change from a postglacial lake to the present-day semi-enclosed brackish-water sea is studied here in sediment cores and acoustic profiles from the Baltic Sea major sub-basins, based on novel datasets combined with information extracted from earlier publications. In shallow areas (<50m water depth), the base of the brackish-water mud is erosional and covered by a patchy, thin, transgressive silt-sand sheet resulting from decreased sediment supply, winnowing and the redistribution of material from local coarse-grained deposits during transgression. This erosional marine flooding surface becomes sharp and possibly erosional in deep areas (>50m water depth), where it may be locally less clearly expressed due to reworking and bioturbation. Both in the shallow and deep areas, the brackish-water mud is strongly enriched in organic matter compared to underlying sediments. Bioturbation type changes at the flooding surface in response to the increased sedimentary organic content, but no firm-ground ichnofacies were developed because of low erosion. It is concluded that the base of the brackish-water mud is a robust allostratigraphic bounding surface that is identifiable by the lithologic examination of cores over the Baltic Sea. The surface is a distinct reflector in seismic-acoustic profiles, which facilitates mapping and basin-wide stratigraphic subdivision. Detailed geochronologic studies are required to confirm if sediments immediately overlying the erosional flooding surface in shallow areas are younger than the basal part of the brackish-water mud in deep areas that is predicted to be time-equivalent to the erosion.

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Acknowledgements

The data used in this study were collected in several projects such as the Inflow project that received funding from the European Community’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP/2007–2013) under grant agreement no. 217246 made with BONUS, the joint Baltic Sea Research and Development Programme, and from the Academy of Finland. Two projects were funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF): BONUS - Baltic Gas (grant no. 03F0488B) and IS-Sedilab (In Situ Sediment Laboratory, grant no. 03F0630). Sandra Passchier, an anonymous reviewer and the journal editors are thanked for constructive criticism that helped improve the manuscript. The participants of the cruises listed in Table 1 are thanked for support during acoustic profiling and sediment coring.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marine Geology, Geological Survey of Finland (GTK), P.O. Box 96, 02151, Espoo, Finland

    Joonas J. Virtasalo, Jyrki Hämäläinen & Aarno T. Kotilainen

  2. Department of Marine Geology, Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW), Seestrasse 15, 18119, Rostock, Germany

    Michael Endler & Matthias Moros

  3. Department of Geography and Geology, University of Turku, 20014, Turku, Finland

    Sami A. Jokinen

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  1. Joonas J. Virtasalo
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  2. Michael Endler
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Correspondence to Joonas J. Virtasalo.

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Virtasalo, J.J., Endler, M., Moros, M. et al. Base of brackish-water mud as key regional stratigraphic marker of mid-Holocene marine flooding of the Baltic Sea Basin. Geo-Mar Lett 36, 445–456 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-016-0464-4

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