Holocene Sedimentary Systems over the Bohai, Yellow and East  China Sea Region: Recent Progress in the Study of Process-Product Relationships

Key words: 
• sediment transport-accumulation processes /
• Holocene sediment systems /
• process-product relationships /
• sedimentary records /
• eastern China shelf seas /
•  /

Abstract: The shallow marine regions consisting of the Bohai, Yellow and East China Seas represent a typical wide continental shelf environment with abundant terrestrial sediment supply. Here, a variety of sedimentary records have been formed during the Holocene period. The Holocene sedimentary systems developed here have unique characteristics in terms of spatial distribution, material composition, Sedimentation  rate and the timing of accumulation, which are related to active sediment transport processes induced by tides, shelf circulations and sediment gravity flow. The sedimentary records thus formed tend to be high resolution slices, i.e., each record has a resolution of <10² years and covers a part of the Holocene period. In the field of process-product relationship study, the mid-Holocene coastal deposits on the Jiangsu coast, the early to middle Holocene sequences of the Hangzhou Bay, the Holocene mud deposits off the Zhejiang-Fujian coasts and theother mud areas over the region are of importance. These systems may be understood by identifying the material supply (from both sea bed reworking during the sea level rise event and river discharges), transport-accumulation processes, the formation of the sediment sequences and the future evolution of the sedimentary systems, for which numerical modeling becomes increasingly important.