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Determining sources of deep-sea mud by organic matter signatures in the Sunda trench and Aceh basin off Sumatra

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Abstract

The content, optically determined properties, and stable isotope composition of organic carbon in fine-grained sediment cores were analyzed to investigate the origins of deep-sea sediments deposited in the Aceh forearc basin and on the Sunda trench floor off Sumatra from the late Pleistocene to the Holocene. In the Aceh basin, the depositional frequency of turbidite mud decreased as sea level rose during the deglaciation. The terrigenous organic carbon content was high at the end of the last glacial period, whereas during the deglaciation most of the organic carbon was of marine origin. In the Sunda trench, the Holocene turbidites consisted of remobilized slope sediments from two different sources: sediments derived from the old Bengal/Nicobar fan included thermally matured organic fragments, whereas those derived from the trench slope contained little terrigenous organic carbon.

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Acknowledgements

We express our sincere thanks to the captains, officers, crews, and onboard scientists of cruises RR0705 of R/V Roger Revelle and MR07-07 of R/V Mirai for their assistance. We are grateful to Dr. C. Goldfinger, Dr. J. Patton, and Ms. A. Morey of Oregon State University, and to Dr. J. Ashi and Dr. K. Satake of the University of Tokyo for supporting this research. We thank Dr. T. Miyajima of the Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute (AORI), the University of Tokyo, and Dr. M. Saito of the National Museum of Nature and Science Tokyo for help with the stable carbon isotope measurements. We also thank Ms. N. Saotome and Dr. Y. Yamada of AORI for help with the microscopic observations. This research was supported in part by KAKENHI Grant Number JP2540125 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, KAKENHI Grant Number JP21107003 from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology of Japan, as well as the Science and Technology Research Partnership for Sustainable Development (SATREPS) by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST), and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) project “Multi-disciplinary Hazard Reduction from Earthquakes and Volcanoes in Indonesia”. The article benefitted from assessments by an anonymous reviewer and the editors.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. JSPS Research Fellow, Graduate School of Frontier Science, The University of Tokyo, Kashiwa, Japan

    Akiko Omura

  2. Geological Survey of Japan, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan

    Ken Ikehara & Kohsaku Arai

  3. Agency for Assessment and Application of Technology (BPPT), Jakarta, Indonesia

    Udrekh

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  1. Akiko Omura
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Correspondence to Akiko Omura.

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Omura, A., Ikehara, K., Arai, K. et al. Determining sources of deep-sea mud by organic matter signatures in the Sunda trench and Aceh basin off Sumatra. Geo-Mar Lett 37, 549–559 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-017-0510-x

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