Assessing the sources of terrigenous sediments deposited in the western equatorial Atlantic via ICP-OES analyses

Abstract

A comprehensive calibration of proxies based on modern environmental conditions is of utmost importance for the appropriate interpretation of paleoenvironmental signals. Therefore, our key goal is to characterize major and minor element compositions of modern suspended sediment transported by the main tributaries of the Amazon River drainage basin. To accomplish this goal, we will analyze suspended sediment samples collected every month spanning a full hydrological cycle (i.e., 12 months) from four key sites in the Amazon River drainage basin (i.e., Solimões and Negro Rivers close to their confluence, and the Amazon River mouth, in both channels).Therefore, we request a research internship abroad in which we will perform the analysis of major and minor elements of suspended sediment samples with an inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectrometer at the Inorganic Geochemistry Lab of the MARUM-Center for Marine Environmental Sciences, University of Bremen, Germany. The obtained geochemical data will be used to (i) evaluate seasonal changes in the elemental composition of suspended sediments int he major tributaries of the Amazon River drainage basin, and (ii) perform an end-member modelling analysis using elemental data from two marine sediment cores collected off the Amazon River mouth. These two marine sediment cores are under investigation within the FAPESP MSc scholarship (2021/00853-0) of the research internship candidate. We expect that the proposed techniques will provide unprecedented detail on the sedimentary dynamics and hydroclimate of the Amazon River drainage basin during Heinrich Stadials 2 and 1. (AU)