RESEARCH PROGRESS OF QUATERNARY DEPOSITIONAL RECORDS OF THE JAPAN SEA AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR THE LINKAGES TO THE ASIAN CONTINENT

As a semi-closed marginal sea located in the northwest Pacific Ocean,the thick sediments of the Japan Sea recorded the paleoceanographic and paleoclimate evolution of the region.The sources of sediments of the Japan Sea can be divided into five types:aeolian dust,river detritus,tephra,ice-rafted debris and marine authigenic materials.Terrigenous detritus from the East Asian continent(inland dust areas and drainage basins of the Yellow River and Yangtze River)Korean Peninsula and Japanese Islands,are dominantly transported to the Japan Sea by atmospheric circulation(East Asian winter monsoon and westerly) and hydrodynamic processes(rivers,currents and sea ice).Thus the composition,particle size and relative flux of the marine sediments in the Japan Sea are changed with climate variations,which altered provenance supply and strength of transportation medium.During the period of Quaternary,the oscillations of bottom water redox conditions and characteristics of authigenic sediments in the Japan Sea can be explained by the change in the influx of currents due to eustatic sea level fluctuations.In this paper,we summarize the sources and characters of the Japan Sea sediments,which have dominantly been controlled by the variations in paleoclimate,and then present some scientific problems need to be solved.