Sedimentation Processes on the Portuguese Margin: The Role of Continental Climate, Ocean Circulation, Sea Level and Neotectonics

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The collaborative project SEDPORT aims to investigate the impact of strong climatic oscillations that have occured in the North Atlantic and over adjacent continents on sedimentary processes and depositional features on the Portuguese shelf and upper slope. Major goals are to better determine the influence of biological productivity, subaerial and submarine sediment transport mechanism on the composition and properties of margin sediment cover during the last glacial-interglacial transition in comparison to modern mean environmental conditions. Hereby special emphasis is given to the question of how these sedimentation processes may have changed under varying climate conditions that affected ocean circulatoin, sea-level, and continental weathering, vegetation and precipitation since the last Ice Age into the Late Holocene. Land-ocean linkages and source to sink relationship for terrigenous material are of particular interest. A synoptic palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of a passive margin including the coastal zone, shelf and slope, taking into account the significant influence of transport and sedimentation processes under varying climates in the hinterland and the ocean, is anticipated as the final product of SEDPORT. For this purpose, comprehensive data sets of sedimentological and compositional parameters form shelf and slope surface sediments and sediment cores will be compiled form existing archives, newly generated data and studied in detail considering palaeoclimatic/environmental mechanism. This all will be put in context with studies of satellite images and documentation of particle transport through the water column with sediment trap deployments, camera systems, and a underwater remotely operated vehicle (ROV) as well as with an estuarine sediment record from the Tagus valley.