Description: Detrital sediment is carried from land to the sea by three agents, rivers, glaciers, and winds. The shoreline is an arbitrary boundary within the detrital sediment transport system, which extends from a site of origin across areas of temporary storage to a site of long-term deposition. The most important of the agents moving sediment across the land is river transport, estimated to be in the order of 20×1012 kg of sediment annually at present. Analysis of drainage basins indicates that relief and runoff are the most important factors in determining the sediment load of rivers. The competence of rivers to transport sediment is governed by the volume flow, gradient, and the sediment load itself. Today, most large rivers are fed by snowmelt in highland areas, runoff from rainfall in the drainage basin, and groundwater inflow. Along the river course, water is lost to evaporation and groundwater infiltration. River courses can often be divided into two segments, a degradational section in which the gradient is relatively steep and little temporary storage of sediment takes place, and an aggradational section where the gradient is sharply reduced through meandering, and where large-scale temporary sediment storage forms a flood plain. Lakes trap sediment inland and prevent its transport to the sea. Today, many high and mid-latitude rivers are interrupted by lakes of glacial origin. There are also some large areas of internal drainage that deliver no sediment to the sea. The load carried by rivers has been markedly altered by human activity, and may have doubled over the past few thousand years, only to be reduced in the past century by the widespread construction of dams. The ancient use of fire in hunting and its subsequent use in clearing land has increased erosion. Extensive deforestation and cultivation processes have also increased the sediment supply. Dam construction is a relatively new factor and affects the sediment transport system by trapping sediment before it can reach the sea. The resulting lower sediment supply from rivers is, at least in part, compensated by increased coastal erosion. Glacial erosion is difficult to estimate. There is an ongoing controversy whether ice sheets are effective erosive agents or not. Estimates of the present global flux of glacial detritus range from 0.8–50×1012 kg annually, with the lower value most probable. The dust flux is in the order of 0.5 to 0.9×1012 kg annually, but may vary greatly with time.

Description: The Cretaceous is a special episode in the history of the Earth named for a unique rock type, chalk. Chalk is similar to modern deep-sea calcareous ooze and its deposition in epicontinental seas occurred as these areas became an integral part of the ocean. The shelf-break fronts that today separate inshore from open-ocean waters cannot have existed during the Late Cretaceous probably because the higher sea level brought the base of the wind-mixed Ekman layer above the sea floor on the continental margins. A second peculiarity of the Cretaceous is its warm equable climate. Tropical and polar temperatures were warmer than today. Meridional and ocean-continent temperature gradients were lower. The warmer climate was a reflection of higher atmospheric levels of greenhouse gasses, CO2 and possibly CH4, reinforced by higher water vapor content in response to the warmer temperatures. Most of the additional energy involved in the meridional heat transport system was transported as latent heat of vaporization of H20 by the atmosphere. Poleward heat transport may have been as much as 1 Petawatt (20%) greater than it is today. C3 plants provided for more efficient energy transport into the interior of the continents. Circulation of the Cretaceous ocean may have been very different from that of today. It is impossible for large areas of the modern ocean to become anoxic, but episodes of local anoxia occurred during the earlier Cretaceous and became regional to global during the middle of the Cretaceous. The present ocean structure depends on constant wind systems, which in turn depend on stability of the atmospheric pressure systems forced by polar ice. During most of the Cretaceous the polar regions were ice free. Without polar ice there were seasonal reversals of the high-latitude atmospheric pressure systems, resulting in disruption of the mid- and high latitude wind systems. Without constant mid-latitude westerly winds, there would be no subtropical and polar fronts in the ocean, no well-developed ocean pycnocline, and no tropical subtropical gyres dominating ocean circulation. Instead the ocean circulation would be accomplished through mesoscale eddies which could carry warmth to the polar regions. Greater knowledge and understanding of the Cretaceous is critical for learning how the climate system operates when one or both polar regions are ice free.

Description: Several new discoveries suggest that the climate of the Cretaceous may have been more different from that of today than has been previously supposed. Detailed maps of climate-sensitive fossils and sediments compiled by Nicolai Chumakov and his colleagues in Russia indicate widespread aridity in the equatorial region during the Early Cretaceous. The very warm ocean temperatures postulated for the Mid-Cretaceous by some authors would likely have resulted in unacceptable heat stress for land plants at those latitudes, however, and may be flawed. Seasonal reversals of the atmospheric pressure systems in the Polar Regions are an oversimplification. However, the seasonal pressure differences between 30° and 60° latitude became quite pronounced, being more than 25 hPa in winter and less than 10 hPa in summer. This resulted in inconstant winds, affecting the development of the gyre-limiting frontal systems that control modern ocean circulation. The idea of Hasegawa et al. (2012) who suggest a drastic reduction in the size of the Hadley cells during the warm Cretaceous greenhouse is supported by several numerical climate simulations. Rapid contraction of the Hadley cell such that its sinking dry air occurs at 15° N latitude rather than 30° N is proposed to occur at a threshold of 1000 ppmv CO2 in the atmosphere. This change will probably be reached in the next century. Keywords

Description: Regional terrane analysis has been combined with a global evaluation of plate kinematics to produce a new tectonic model for the Mesozoic evolution of western North America and its associated marginal seas. The model employs a two-tiered data reliability ranking system to resolve conflicts within data sets. The lower tier of the ranking system involves the assignment of a numerical rank to paleomagnetic and/or paleobiogeographic data based on each data set's reliability. The upper tier of the ranking system places the paleomagnetic and paleobiogeographic data in perspective by assigning a relative order of importance to different types of data. The most reliable data are considered to be “departure” (rift) and “arrival” (collision) times that are tightly constrained by independent data sets. Evidence of subduction and/or strike-slip motion also ranks high in the master ranking system. Paleomagnetic and vertebrate paleobiogeographic data come next in the hierarchy, followed by invertebrate and floral paleobiogeographic data. Application of this approach to a case study, the “Baja British Columbia” controversy, has resulted in a coherent model for the entire region.

Description: In this study we present a late Miocene–early Pliocene record of sixty-four zones with prominent losses in the magnetic susceptibility signal, taken on a sediment drift (ODP Site 1095) on the Pacific continental rise of the West Antarctic Peninsula. The zones are comparable in shape and magnitude and occur commonly at glacial-to-interglacial transitions. High resolution records of organic matter, magnetic susceptibility and clay mineral composition from early Pliocene intervals demonstrate that neither dilution effects nor provenance changes of the sediments have caused the magnetic susceptibility losses. Instead, reductive dissolution of magnetite under suboxic conditions seems to be the most likely explanation. We propose that during the deglaciation exceptionally high organic fluxes in combination with weak bottom water currents and prominent sediment draping diatom ooze layers produced temporary suboxic conditions in the uppermost sediments. It is remarkable that synsedimentary suboxic conditions can be observed in one of the best ventilated open ocean regions of the World.

Description: The sediments recovered on ODP Leg 104 have been reported to be characterized by hiatuses. The hiatuses were defined by biostratigraphy and were believed to be caused by erosion related to temporary changes of bottom current composition and velocity. They have been associated with major paleoenvironmental changes, reorganization of global deep water production, and increased bottom water flows. Because of the importance of hiatuses for ongoing research, we decided to closely investigate the sedimentation history for the most significant Pliocene and Miocene biostratigraphic hiatuses by sedimentologic and geochemical means. The sedimentologic studies include clay mineral distributions, grain size data, and organic carbon concentrations. The geochemical studies include determination of Full-size image (〈1 K)Sr ratios, 10Be and Ir concentrations. The results of the sedimentologic studies suggest either that paleoenvironmental changes associated with hiatuses are not represented in the preserved sediments, or that the hiatuses are an artifact of interpretation of the biostratigraphic data. Strontium isotopes indicate continuous sedimentation for the interval investigated at Site 642, an interpretation confirmed by the steady decline in 10Be. Full-size image (〈1 K)Sr ratios in the interval from above and below proposed hiatuses H Full-size image (〈1 K) and Full-size image (〈1 K) at Site 643 display stronger changes with depth than expected by steady sedimentation. Ir data for this same interval indicate reduced sedimentation rates. Combining both, sedimentologic and geochemical evidence, the proposed hiatuses could not be confirmed and may represent preservation artifacts.

Description: We use global climate simulations across one precessional cycle to investigate the effect of orbitally induced climatic changes on sedimentation in the Western Interior Seaway (WIS) of North America at the Cenomanian/Turonian boundary. The simulations include a control run with no orbital eccentricity and hence no precession cycle, and four runs with varying precession with an eccentricity of 0.05 having (1) northern spring equinox at perihelion, (2) northern winter solstice at perihelion, (3) northern fall equinox at perihelion, and (4) northern summer solstice at perihelion. These numeric climate simulations and field observations suggest that the WIS at the Cenomanian/Turonian boundary can be divided into three latitudinal units: (1) A northern unit (Alberta–Montana) between 51°N and 71°N paleolatitude where conditions remained constant under the influence of steady inflow of low salinity, cool waters which were devoid of calcareous plankton flowed in from the Arctic, preventing the development of bedding couplets. (2) A central unit (Wyoming–Colorado) between 41°N and 51°N paleolatitude where runoff from Western North America (WNA) was reduced by more than half when the northern hemisphere winter solstice coincided with perihelion, where bedding couplets are well developed. The central part of the WIS was characterized by warm saline waters with abundant calcareous plankton. However it experienced high summer surface runoff from the Sevier Highlands to the west during all orbital configurations except when the winters were unusually warm, with the northern hemisphere winter solstice occurring at perihelion. Seasonal dilution of the surface waters of the seaway may have resulted in formation of a “fresh water lid” with stratification of the water column throughout most of the precession cycle. When the northern hemisphere winter solstice was at perihelion, reduced runoff would promote vertical mixing. Concomitantly, a steady detrital sediment supply would occur in summer throughout the precession cycle except when the NH winter solstice was at perihelion, when it would be much reduced. Thus the marlstone of the limestone–marlstone couplets would represent most of the time of the precession cycle and the limestone layers would represent the time when the NH winter solstice was near perihelion. (3) A southern region (New Mexico–northern Mexico) from 21° to 42°N paleolatitude where the detrital sediment supply was much reduced and couplets are thicker and less well developed.

Description: A compilation of data on volumes and masses of evaporite deposits is used as the basis for reconstruction of the salinity of the ocean in the past. Chloride is tracked as the only ion essentially restricted to the ocean, and past salinities are calculated from reconstructed chlorine content of the ocean. Models for ocean salinity through the Phanerozoic are developed using maximal and minimal estimates of the volumes of existing evaporite deposits, and using constant and declining volumes of ocean water through the Phanerozoic. We conclude that there have been significant changes in the mean salinity of the ocean accompanying a general decline throughout the Phanerozoic. The greatest changes are related to major extractions of salt into the young ocean basins which developed during the Mesozoic as Pangaea broke apart. Unfortunately, the sizes of these salt deposits are also the least well known. The last major extractions of salt from the ocean occurred during the Miocene, shortly after the large scale extraction of water from the ocean to form the ice cap of Antarctica. However, these two modifications of the masses of H2O and salt in the ocean followed in sequence and did not cancel each other out. Accordingly, salinities during the Early Miocene were between 37‰ and 39‰. The Mesozoic was a time of generally declining salinity associated with the deep sea salt extractions of the North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico (Middle to Late Jurassic) and South Atlantic (Early Cretaceous). The earliest of the major extractions of the Phanerozoic occurred during the Permian. There were few large extractions of salt during the earlier Palaeozoic. The models suggest that this was a time of relatively stable but slowly increasing salinities ranging through the upper 40‰'s into the lower 50‰'s. Higher salinities for the world ocean have profound consequences for the thermohaline circulation of the ocean in the past. In the modern ocean, with an average salinity of about 34.7‰, the density of water is only very slightly affected by cooling as it approaches the freezing point. Consequently, salinization through sea-ice formation or evaporation is usually required to make water dense enough to sink into the ocean interior. At salinities above about 40‰ water continues to become more dense as it approaches the freezing point, and salinization is not required. The energy-consuming phase changes involved in sea-ice formation and evaporation would not be required for vertical circulation in the ocean. The hypothesized major declines in salinity correspond closely to the evolution of both planktonic foraminifera and calcareous nannoplankton. Both groups were restricted to shelf regions in the Jurassic and early Cretaceous, but spread into the open ocean in the mid-Cretaceous. Their availability to inhabit the open ocean may be directly related to the decline in salinity. The Permian extraction may have created stress for marine organisms and may have been a factor contributing to the end-Permian extinction. The modeling also suggests that there was a major salinity decline from the Late Precambrian to the Cambrian, and it is tempting to speculate that this may have been a factor in the Cambrian explosion of life.

Description: Today, the ocean is characterized by pools of warm tropical–subtropical water bounded poleward and at depth by cold water. In the tropics and subtropics, the warm waters are floored at depth by the thermocline–pycnocline, which crops out on the ocean surface between the subtropical and polar frontal systems that form the poleward boundary. It is along and between the frontal systems that the thermocline waters enter the ocean interior. These frontal systems form beneath the maxima of the zonal component of the westerly winds. Today, the location of the westerly winds is stabilized by the persistent high-pressure systems at the polar regions produced by the ice cover of the Antarctic and sea-ice cover of the Arctic. The paleobiogeographic distribution of plankton fossils indicates that, prior to the Oligocene, the subtropical and polar frontal systems were not persistent features. Recent climate model experiments show that without perennial ice cover in the polar regions a seasonal alternation between high and low atmospheric pressure systems can occur. These seasonal alternations would force major changes in the location and strength of the westerly winds, preventing the development of the well-defined frontal systems that characterize the Earth today. Without the subtropical and polar frontal systems, the thermocline would be less well developed and the pycnocline could be dominated by salinity differences. Evidence from ocean drilling suggests that the glaciation of East Antarctica began at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary, but took time to spread over the entire continent. The presence of calcareous nannoplankton in the Arctic basin prior to the Oligocene and their absence thereafter suggests that the ice cover of the Arctic Ocean also developed at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary. Both events appear to be related to the development of the modern oceanic structure, but it remains uncertain whether the ocean changed in response to the development of ice covered polar regions or vice versa.