DISTINGUISHING THE CHANGJIANG AND HUANGHE SEDIMENTS: A REVIEW

Two large rivers, Huanghe and Changjiang, deliver a huge amount of terrigenous sediment up to more than 1.6 billion tons per year to the East China Seas. The sediment, which predominates the epicontinental sea, has immense impacts on the depositional, aquatic and ecological systems, as well as geochemical cycles. Therefore, distinguishing the provenances of the sediments is critical not only for understanding the temporal and spatial dispersal pattern of the sediments from the Changjiang and Huanghe, but also for interpretation and reconstruction of paleoenvironmental changes preserved in the deposits. In recent years, great advances in distinguishing the Changjiang and Huanghe sediments have been reached by multi-disciplinary studies (Mineralogy, Geochemistry, and Magnetics etc.); however, there still remains considerable uncertainty in the mixing areas. In this paper, we provided an overview on this topic by summarizing the different discriminating proxies. Future research topics are also suggested.