Research progress of tracing sediment sources in the Western Pacific Warm Pool

Extracting tracer indicators from sediments is one of the effective ways to study the paleoenvironment and paleoclimate evolution in the Western Pacific Warm Pool (WPWP), and the key is to accurately identify the source region of sediments. The sources of sediments in the northern and western WPWP since the Quaternary have been studied using different source tracers, such as clay minerals, quartz, major elements, REE and Sr-Nd isotope of clastic components. Results show that the sediments of the WPWP originate mainly from the Asian continent and volcanic island arcs, and some originate from Australia and/or New Guinea. This paper systematically summarizes the sources and tracing methods of sediments in the WPWP, points out the issues in the current researches, and puts forward the prospects for the identification of sediment sources in the future.