Scientists from several European countries and Australia have joined efforts to quantify how much sediments have been deposited in the global oceans. The study led by PhD candidate Eivind Straume (CEED, UiO, Norway), including CEED authors Carmen Gaina, and Sergei Medvedev, explores global sediment thickness patterns in a newly published article in Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems. They show that the total amount of sediments in the oceans is much greater than previously thought, almost 30% more!
They confirmed that sediment distribution depends on the age and latitudinal position of oceanic basins. Ocean sedimentary rocks are products of marine biological processes and land erosion, and are transported and deposited on the seafloor by winds, and ocean currents. Using a new formula derived from the sediment distribution in today’s oceans, scientists can now back-calculate how deep were the oceans in the geological past, and may reveal something about processes that have operated over millions of years.
Reference:
E. O. Straume, C. Gaina, S. Medvedev, K. Hochmuth, K. Gohl, J. M. Whittaker, R. Abdul Fattah, J. C. Doornenbal, J. R. Hopper. 2019. GlobSed: Updated Total Sediment Thickness in the World's Oceans. Geochemistry, Geophysics, Geosystems
https://doi.org/10.1029/2018GC008115
