Magnetic Mineral Fluxes in the Quaternary South Atlantic: Implications for the Paleoenvironment.

Abstract

The objective of this thesis is the identification of linkages between terrigeneous and biogeneous magnetic particle fluxes to the South Atlantic sedimentary environment and their climatic and oceanographic controls during Holocene and the penultimate major deglaciation, Termination II. For this approach, environmental magnetic and statistical analyses were successfully performed in three interconnected studies, each represented by an individual publication. The environmental magnetic results characterize the magnetic mineral inventories of the sediments by their concentration, mineralogy, magnetic grain-size, and coercivity. These primary data are related to the climatic conditions in the source areas, means and pathways of transport, and the depositional environment.