Abstract
The Ioffe Drift has a special place among the discoveries of the contourite and mixed contourite-turbidite depositional systems of the western South Atlantic along the path of the Antarctic Bottom Water (AABW) and Lower Circumpolar Deep Water (LCDW) into the Brazil Basin. The drift is located in the Southern Brazil Basin, to the north of Rio Grande Rise and north-east of the northern exit from the Vema Channel, in the core of a large oligotrophic gyre with an anticlockwise circulation of largescale, upper-level geostrophic currents and low biological productivity. The terrigenous material supply to the drift area is rather low due to its remoteness from the continent and dominant directions of the south-east trade winds. The sediments in the drift area are mostly composed of calcareous microfossils. A multiproxy study of the sediment cores along with the seismoacoustic records provides multiple evidence of the contourite origin of the drift.
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Ivanova, E., Murdmaa, I., Borisov, D. (2021). Introduction. In: Murdmaa, I., Ivanova, E. (eds) The Ioffe Drift. Springer Geology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82871-4_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82871-4_1
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