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Response of sediment grain size to sea-level rise during the middle Holocene on the west coast of the Gulf of Thailand

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Abstract

Siliciclastic grain size in lake sediments is an important proxy for studying the local paleoenvironmental conditions. Here, we report on temporal variations in siliciclastic grain size coupled with carbonate content of Core TLN-CP5 retrieved from Thale Noi Lake on the west coast of the Gulf of Thailand. The grain-size distribution coupled with sensitive component analysis in the studied core suggests that the 1.88–4.03 μm (Sensitive component: S2) and 9.86–24.1 μm (S3) grain-size populations responded to changes in the local sedimentary conditions of the area. A prominent feature is a sharp increase in the S2/S3 ratio after around 7.92 ± 0.12 cal ka BP, indicating the rapid sea-level rise during the middle Holocene on the west coast of the Gulf of Thailand. Moreover, our results reveal a change in the sediment processes of the lake, which could be caused by the trapping of fine-grained sediments in a low-energy environment when mangrove forests were established during the sea-level rise. These findings highlight that the variability of siliciclastic grain size in a coastal lake is closely correlated to sea-level change, which greatly increases our understanding of the effects of sea-level rise on the sediment dynamic processes in the lake on the west coast of the Gulf of Thailand.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation for their cooperation in collecting the sediment core and the PSU EnviLab, Faculty of Technology and Environment, Prince of Songkla University, Phuket Campus for sedimentology analyses. We are grateful to Dr. Raymond James Ritchie for his critical reading of the manuscript and Dr. Seppo Karrila for helping us to improve our English.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marine Environment and Geoinformatics Technology Research Unit, Faculty of Technology and Environment, Prince of Songkla University, Phuket Campus, Phuket, 83120, Thailand

    Thanakorn Jiwarungrueangkul & Rawee Rattanakom

  2. Morphology of Earth Surface and Advanced Geohazards in Southeast Asia Research Unit (MESA), Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand

    Akkaneewut Jirapinyakul

  3. Department of Marine Science, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand

    Penjai Sompongchaiyakul

  4. Third Institute of Oceanography, Ministry of Natural Resources, Xiamen, 361005, China

    Shaohua Zhao

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  1. Thanakorn Jiwarungrueangkul
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Correspondence to Thanakorn Jiwarungrueangkul.

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Jiwarungrueangkul, T., Jirapinyakul, A., Sompongchaiyakul, P. et al. Response of sediment grain size to sea-level rise during the middle Holocene on the west coast of the Gulf of Thailand. Arab J Geosci 15, 132 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12517-022-09450-3

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