Deep sea pollen record during 12－1.6 Ma from the southern South China Sea and its response to envi-ronmental change

Based on deep-sea pollen results (512-76 m) from ODP Site 1143 in the southern South China Sea (SCS),the climate and vegetation evolution sequence on the surrounding islands and the exposed continental shelf are discussed. The pollen records show that the pollen influx was quite low before 8.15 Ma and increased dramatically afterwards. The influx changes can be ascribed,on one side,to tectonics deformations around the southern SCS resulting in rapid uplift of islands and subsequent increase of the sediment rates and pollen influx and on the other side to climate cooling and monsoon enhancement. Around 2.63 Ma was another obvious boundary,the increasing of pollen and spores influx since this time was mainly related to global climate cooling. Spectrum analysis of pollen influx values shows that 2 Ma,0.67 Ma,and 0.19-0.17 Ma cycles existed during 12-3.0 Ma,while 0.1 Ma and 46.9 ka cycles existed during 3.0-2.0 Ma.     

Deep-water Earliest Oligocene Glacial Maximum （EOGM） in South Atlantic

The most prominent cooling event of the Earth surface during Cenozoic in the long-term transition from a non-glaciated planet, or “green-house world”, to a polar, glaciated planet, or “ice-house world”, is the Earliest Oligocene Glacial Maximum (EOGM) above the Eocene/Oligocene boundary at about 33.7 Ma. Planktonic and benthic foraminiferal oxygen and carbon isotopes, carbonate content, and coarse fraction, along with high-resolution color reflectance and magnetic susceptibility records during 35-30 Ma, from deep-water Sites 1262 and 1265, Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 208 in South Atlantic, reveal the global cooling event occurring in both surface and deep oceans. The results show that the earliest Oligocene δ^18O values during 33.5-33.1 Ma represent the magnitude of continental ice sheets on east Antarctica and indicate the large decrease in both surface and deep water temperatures of worldwideoceans. The δ^13C records show the large excursion during the period of EOGM event and indicate some types of shift in global carbon reservoir, probably demonstrating the sudden increase in organic carbon burial rates and the changes in the distribution and timing of production. At the same time, lithologic composition, carbonate content, color reflectance, and coarse fraction brought about significant changes close to the Eocene/Oligocene boundary, reflecting the abrupt deepening in the carbonate compensation depth (CCD). Changes in carbonate content were revealed from the color reflectance identify periodicities associated with eccentricity of the Earth‘s orbit (100 and 400 ka), further indicating orbitally forced global climate variations in the Early Oligocene.     

Vegetation evolution and millennial-scale climatic fluctuations since Last Glacial Maximum in pollen record from northern South China Sea

A large number of paleoclimate records reveal subMilankovitch climatic fluctuations on the millennial-scalesuperimposing on the Earth orbital cycles[1], such as theHeinrich ice draft events in the Atlantic (each intervalabout 7000–10000 a)[2,3], the Dansgaard/Oeschger (D-O)events (millennial-scale) in Greenland Ice Cores and theBond cycle composed of a Heinrcih event after severalD-O events[4]. At present, most recent work on millennial-scale climatic fluctuations focuses on the high lat…     

A 200-ka carbon isotope record from the South China Sea

Stable isotope of autogenous oceanic carbonate (e.g., calcite of foraminiferal shells) has become a basic tracer in paleoceanography. Oxygen isotope composi-tion (δ 18O) is generally controlled by factors, such as ice volume and water temperature, and is…     

南海表面海温异常对南海季风影响的数值模拟

采用P-σ混合坐标系区域气候模式模拟了4－7月南海季风的爆发、演变过程，并进行了3组敏感性数值试验，研究南海表面海温异常对南海季风的影响，得到以下结论：（1）南海4月份海温异常对南海季风的爆发日期影响不大，但对季风爆发后的强度有所影响，异常增温造成南海季风增强，异常降温则南海季风减弱。（2）南海季风爆发和强度的变化与南海本身的海温变化情况有密切的关系，尤其是5月份南海海温异常。5月份南海异常增温可以使南海季风提前爆发，季风增强，南海海温异常降低时，南海季风爆发的时间推迟，季风减弱。（3）南海海温持续异常可以影响南海及中国大陆的高低空环流变化，海温持续异常增温可以使南海季风提前爆发，显地加强南海季风，并有利于南海季风向北推进，但当海温在6月份进一步持续增温时，则有利于季风维持在较南地区，阻碍季风向北发展；当海温持续异常降低时，南海季风推迟爆发，且明显减弱。     

南海北部深水油气新认识

南海北部陆缘深水区由于陆缘地壳的强烈伸展减薄,形成了多个宽深断陷所构成的盆地群,发育多种类型烃源岩和大型储集砂体。大型盆地、广泛分布的多类型烃源岩、高-变地温场的耦合共控,奠定了深水油气资源的物质基础。大型供给水系、构造地貌、相对海平面升降的相互作用,形成3种类型的沉积体系,控制了深水区大型储集体的发育和展布,但高热流加速了深水沉积物压实和成岩作用。南海北部陆缘深水油气勘探前景广阔,烃源岩、有效储层以及热流3因素的复杂多变,决定了油气勘探中机遇与挑战并存。     

南海东部深海沉积物中孢粉与古环境研究

通过对南海东部294站深海柱状剖面高分辨孢粉、藻类的研究，将294站从下至上划分为7个孢粉组合带,依次为:Ⅰ带:Dacrydium-Pinus-Lithocarpus-Quercus(带绿)-Cyathea-Polypoldiace;Ⅱ带:Castanopsis-Lithocarpus-Dacrydium-Quercus(常绿)-Pinus-Polypodiace;Ⅲ带:Quercus(常绿)-Castanopsis-Podocarpus-Polypodiaceae;Ⅳ带:Polypodiaceae-Cyathea-Pteris-Pinus-Gramineae;Ⅴ带:Quercus(常绿)-Podocarpus-Lithocarpus-Cyathea-Polypodiaceae;Ⅵ带:Pinus-Quercus(常绿)-Palmae-Mangrove pollen-Gramineae;Ⅶ带:Dacrydium-Palmae-Mangrove Pollen-Pinus-Cyperaceae-Cyathea.并相应恢复了南海东部地区12万年以来5个植被、气候演替阶段，依次为：炎热、湿润的热带季雨林——暖热而稍干的热带北缘半常绿季雨林——炎热、湿润的热带季雨林——暖热而稍干的热带北缘半常绿季雨林——炎热、湿润的热带季雨林。结合氧同位素测年资料，对294站地层时代划分作了讨论，为南海古气候、古环境演变研究提供了科学的证据。     

Carbon isotopic record of foraminifers in surface sediments from the South China Sea and its significance

Since the 1990s, the papers and data involved withthe South China Sea (SCS) have been emerging in largenumbers in the world as people pay more attention to thepaleoceanography of the SCS. There have been more than100 cores mentioned in papers containing p…     

南海海盆演变与深部海流

南海在距今34 Ma之前的始新世从陆地变为海洋,古水深不断加深,至距今24 Ma之前的中新世/渐新世之交,由于T60构造运动,南海海盆整体进入深海环境。但是,自中新世以来随着吕宋岛弧向欧亚板块碰撞,南海海盆的半封闭程度在距今10.0、6.5、3.0和1.2 Ma之前加剧,导致南海深部海水只能来自巴士海峡海槛深度2600 m以浅的太平洋。此后,巴士海峡两侧的南海与太平洋深部海水交换,由于全球海平面变化,呈现冰期/间冰期模式。     

Carbonate dissolution and deep-water paleoceanography of the South China Sea since the Middle Pleistocene

Based on the data of oxygen isotope, micropaleontology and paleomagnetism, we set up the detailed chronology of Core 17957-2 from the southern South China Sea and discuss the change of carbonate dissolution over the last 800 ka. Down-core variation of carbonate content records the “Pacific-type” cycle of higher glacial values and lower interglacial values, though the core lies above the modern lysocline. Carbonate dissolution indices indicate that several severe dissolution of CaCO₃happened during the transition from interglacial to glacial stages. Spectral analyses of these indices show that the carbonate dissolution periodicities are mainly made up of 500 ka and 100 ka. Compared with the cycles of carbonate dissolution of the Indian Ocean, the long-term (500-ka) periodicity reflects the characteristic of the deep-water circulation of the oceans.     

南海深水海山上的新发现

在国家自然科学基金委重大研究计划"南海深部计划"指导下,于2013—2019年期间,分别运用载人或遥控深潜器,针对南海深海盆中的部分海山开展了4个科学探测航次,在南海首次发现了大面积的高丰度铁锰结核分布区、"南溟"古热液区和惊人的冷水珊瑚生态林。这些发现不仅为深入认识南海不同时空尺度演化的复杂过程及相互作用开辟了新的研究领域,还探索实践了中国海洋高新技术发展与前沿基础科学研究紧密结合并相互促进的高效创新研究模式。     

Thirty million year deep-sea records in the South China Sea

In the spring of 1999 the Ocean Drilling Program (ODP) Leg 184 Shipboard Party cored 17 holes at 6 deep water sites in the northern and southern parts of the South China Sea (SCS). Chinese scientists actively participated in the entire process of this first deep-sea drilling leg off China, from proposal to post-cruise studies. More than 30 categories of analyses have been conducted post-cruise in various Chinese laboratories on a large number of core samples, and the total number of analyses exceeded 60 thousand.The major scientific achievements of the Leg 184 studies are briefly reported in three successive papers, with the first one presented here dealing with deep-sea stratigraphy and evolution of climate cycles. This ODP leg has established the best deep-sea stratigraphic sequences in the Western Pacific: the 23-Ma isotope sequence from the Dong-Sha area is unique worldwide because of its continuity; the last 5-Ma sequence from the Nansha area represents one of the best 4 ODP sites worldwide with the highest time-resolution for that time interval, and the sequences of physical properties enable a decadal-scale time resolution. All these together have provided for the first time high-quality marine records for paleoenvi-ronmental studies in the Asian-Pacific region. This new set of stratigraphic records has revealed changes in climate cyclicity over the last 20 Ma with the fluctuating power of the 100 ka, 400 ka, 2000 ka eccentricity cycles, indicating the evolving response of the climate system to orbital forcing along with the growth of the Antarctic and Northern Hemisphere ice sheets.     

Cenozoic stratigraphy of Taiwan: Window into rifting, stratigraphy and paleoceanography of South China Sea

Shallow marine sequences of the northern South China Sea (SCS) are uplifted and exposed by plate convergence in the Taiwan mountain belt. These deposits provide detailed geological information about the rifting event, stratigraphy, sedimentology, paleoclimate and paleoceanography of the shallow SCS to compare with what are recorded in the ODP 1148 deep-sea core. Seismic surveys and marine micropalentological studies show that Eocene sequences in the offshore Taiwan Strait and onland Taiwan mountain belt are all deposited in rifting basins and are covered unconformably by the Late Oligocene-Neogene post-rifting strata. Between syn-rifting and post-rifting sequences, there is a regional break-up unconformity throughout the island. Early Oligocene and Late Eocene strata are missing along the break-up unconformity equivalent to the T7 unconformity in the Pearl River Mouth Basin off south China. This may suggest that the SCS oceanic crust could have initiated between 33 and 39 Ma. Neither obvious stratigraphic gap nor slumping features are found in the Oligocene-Miocene transition interval of Taiwan. This observation highly contrasts with what has been documented from the ODP 1148 deep-sea core. This suggests that the stratigraphic gap and slumping features could only be recorded in the SCS deep sea region, but not in the shallow shelf near Taiwan. Compared to the Middle Miocene paleoceanographic re-organization events in the SCS deep sea, the geological history of the Taiwan shallow sequence shows changes of in sedimentation and faunal composition. Due to the Antarctic glacial expansion at~14 Ma, Middle to late Miocene strata of the Western Foothills show progressive regression sedimentations associated with a decrease of benthic foraminif-eral abundance and a sharp faunal turnover event. Many Early-Middle Miocene endemic benthic foraminifers were extinct in 14-13 Ma and new benthic foraminifers of the Kuroshio Current fauna appeared from 10.2 Ma, comparable with new occurrence of Modern benthic foraminifers at 9 Ma in the Java Sea area. This reveals that the Western Boundary Kuroshio Current in the North Pacific could initiate from 10-9 Ma due to closures of the Indo-Pacific seaways by convergent tectonics between the Australian Continent and the Indonesian Arc in 12-8 Ma. Subduction of the SCS oceanic lithosphere since the Middle Miocene resulted in formation of the Hengchun Ridge accretionary prism and the North Luzon Arc. Occurrence of these two bathymetric highs ( 2400 m) since the Middle Miocene and closures of the inter-arc passages in the North Luzon arc in the last 3.5 Ma would control the water exchanges between the West Pacific and the deep SCS. Accordingly, the tectonic evolution in the Central Range-Hengchun Peninsula accretionary prism and the arc-forearc Coastal Range not only control directly the route for water exchanges between the West Pacific and the SCS, but also indirectly shows a great influence on the geochemistry of deep SCS waters. The latter is best shown by much negative carbon isotope values of benthic foraminifers in the ODP 1148 deep-sea core than the West Pacific records in the last 14 Ma.     

Internal solitons in the northern South China Sea from insitu observations

In this paper, we demonstrate the characteristics of strong internal solitons at the southern edge of Dongsha Islands in the northern South China Sea （SCS） during May-June 1998, using in situ time series data from the conductivity temperature depth （CTD）, acoustic Doppler current profiler （ADCP） and thermistor chain. Our measurements indicated that the strongest internal solitons were larger than 90 m in wave amplitude, and propagated approximately westward in traveling direction, with the maximum current speed of about 2 m/s and the period of 10-20 min. The strongest internal solitons occurred noticeably during May 14- 16, 1998, which is consistent with the occurrence period of the diurnal-dominated spring internal tides.     

Deep-sea pollen research in China

This paper briefly presents the progress of deep-sea pollen research in China since the beginning of ninetieths of the last Century. All the deep-sea pollen contri-butions mainly come from the South China Sea (SCS) and the East China Sea (ECS). The German-Chinese joint cruise (Sonne 95) and ODP 184 cruise initiated by Chinese scientists in the SCS provided excellent material for the deep-sea pollen research. So far a number of pollen results of 20-30 ka and million years from the SCS have been published. A couple of deep-sea pollen records from Okinawa Through of the ECS also came out. The high resolution pollen records obtained from the continuous deposits with high sedimentation rates and reliable age control of the deep-sea sediments provided a high time resolution history (hundred to millennial scales) of vegetation, environment and monsoon evolution of the pollen source areas (southern China and Japan). Spectral analysis of deep-sea pollen records from the SCS discovered orbital (100, 41, 23, 10 ka) and suborbital cyclicities(Heinrich and Dansgaard/Oscheger-O/D events) in the vegetation changes. Moreover, cross spectral analysis showed that the trend of vegetation changes in northern SCS was regulated mainly by changes of the ice volume in the Northern Hemisphere. The pollen record of the last 20 ka from the Okinawa Through of the ECS indicates that the marine environmental change lagged that on the terrestrail by about 1000 year. The asynchronous environmental changes between land and sea were probably caused by the time difference in thermohaline circulation. This study underscored the role of the deep-sea plant fossils as a bridge across the land and sea.     

测井资料反演南海北部陆坡渐新统的矿物组分

南海1148站是大洋钻探计划（ODP）184航次惟一钻揭渐新统的站位，但该段地层取芯收获率低，影响了根据岩芯地质和地球化学分析对地层性质的了解．利用1148A孔连续测井曲线，反演矿物组成，旨在建立渐新统地层剖面．根据岩芯分析资料，将渐新统地层简化为陆源碎屑、碳酸盐、粘土矿物和孔隙四种组分．选取与岩性和孔隙度关系密切的无铀自然伽玛、地层体积密度、光电吸收截面指数和中子孔隙度四种测井曲线，建立测井响应方程组，用线性最小二乘法求解地层组分体积含量，其结果与岩芯分析数据能较好地对比．将反演结果回代至测井响应方程组，所得模拟测井曲线与实际测井曲线能很好吻合，从一个侧面证明了根据测井曲线反演的地层组分结果的合理性．     

Quaternary high-resolution opal record and its paleoproductivity implication at ODP Site 1143,southern South China Sea

The correlation of opal content and MAR with oxygen isotopic records of benthonic foraminifera at Site 1143, southern South China Sea indicates that,since about 900 ka,the increasing opal content and MAR during the interglacial periods is inferred to reflect the bigher surface productivity ,for the intensified summer monsoon during the interglacial periods would result in the enhanced upwelling and nutrient supply,Time-sequence spectral analyses of oxygen isotopic record ,opal content and MAR at intervals of 0-900 ka reveal that the changes of surface productivity were dominantly forced by the variations of the earth orbital cycles.     

Evolution of the South China Sea and monsoon history revealed in deep-sea records

As the third summary report of ODP Leg 184 to the South China Sea (SCS), this paper discusses the evolution of the East Asian monsoon and the SCS basin. A multi-proxy approach, involving geochemistry, micropale-ontology, pollen and other analyses, was adopted for reconstructing the evolutionary history of the East Asian monsoon, which was characterized by a series of paleo-climate events especially at 8, 3.2, 2.2 and 0.4 Ma. The new record indicates similar stages in the development of the East and South Asian monsoons, with an enhanced winter monsoon over East Asia being the major difference. The rich spectrums of monsoon variability from the southern SCS also reveal other characteristic features of the low latitude ocean. Evidence for the evolution of the SCS includes the hemipelagic Oligocene sediments, implying the existence of deep water environments during the early seafloor spreading stage of the SCS basin. The four major unconformities and some remarkabl ediagenetic features in upper Oligocene deposits indicate the strongest tectonic events in the region. From a careful comparison of lithologies and sedimentation rates, we conclude that the prominent differences in sedimentary environments between the southern and northern SCS were established only by ～3 Ma.     

Variability of surface circulation in the South China Sea from satellite altimeter data

11-year satellite altimeter sea surface height （SSH） anomaly data from January 1993 to December 2003 are used to present the dominant spatial patterns and temporal variations of the South China Sea （SCS） surface circulation through Empirical Orthogonal Function （EOF） analysis. The first three EOF modes show the obvious seasonal variations of SSH in the SCS. EOF mode one is generally characterized by a basin-wide circulation. Mode two describes the double-cell basin scale circulation structure. The two cells were located off west of the Luzon Island and southeast of Vietnam, respectively. EOF mode three presents the mesoscale eddy structure in the western SCS, which develops into a strong cyclonic eddy rapidly from July to September. EOF mode one and mode three are also embedded with interannual signals, indicating that the SCS surface circulation variation is influenced by El Nino events prominently. The strong El Nino of 1997/98 obviously changed the SCS circulation structure. This study also shows that there existed a series of mesoscale eddies in the western SCS, and their temporal variation indicates intra-seasonal and interannual signals.     

Crustal activities recorded in coral reefs in the northwestern South China Sea

Coral reefs in the northwest of South China Sea have recorded the information from not only the environmental variation but also the crustal activities there during their development. The main crustal activities correlated with the coral reef development include fault, seismic, and volcano activities, etc. The high-resolution spark seismic profiles in the northwestern South China Sea show that the fault activities in the coral reef region have been clearly recorded, and appear as neonatal faults incising reefs. Earthquakes in the coral reef region are rather intense, especially the two occurring on December, 31, 1994, and January, 10, 1995, around the southwest of Leizhou Peninsula, with the magnitude of 6.1 and 6.2, respectively. They have great influence on the growth of the local coral reefs. Quaternary volcanos are active in the northwestern South China Sea, especially around the southwest of Leizhou Peninsula, and they have obvious control of the coral reef development. Some submarine volcanoes form the substrates of coral reef, while a few emerge above the sea surface and form coral islands.