Ecological and environmental stability in offshore Southern California
Marine Basins through the Holocene
Abstract
In the face of ongoing marine deoxygenation, understanding timescales
and drivers of past oxygenation change is of critical importance. Marine
sediment cores from tiered silled basins provide a natural laboratory to
constrain timing and implications of oxygenation changes across multiple
depths. Here, we reconstruct oxygenation and environmental change over
time using benthic foraminiferal assemblages from sediment cores from
three basins across the Southern California Borderlands: Tanner Basin
(EW9504-09PC, 1194 m water depth), San Nicolas Basin (EW9504-08PC, 1442
m), and San Clemente Basin (EW9504-05PC ,1818 m). We utilize indicator
taxa, community ecology, and an oxygenation transfer function to
reconstruct past oxygenation, and we directly compare reconstructed
dissolved oxygen to modern measured dissolved oxygen. We generate new,
higher resolution carbon and oxygen isotope records from planktic
(Globigerina bulloides) and benthic foraminifera (Cibicides mckannai)
from Tanner Basin. Geochemical and assemblage data indicate limited
ecological and environmental change through time in each basin across
the intervals studied. Early to mid-Holocene (11.0-4.7 ka) oxygenation
below 1400 m (San Clemente and San Nicolas) was relatively stable and
reduced relative to modern. San Nicolas Basin experienced a
multi-centennial oxygenation episode from 4.7-4.3 ka and oxygenation
increased in Tanner Basin gradually from 1.7-0.8 ka. Yet across all
three depths and time intervals studied, dissolved oxygen is
consistently within a range of intermediate hypoxia (0.5-1.5 ml L-1
[O2]). Variance in reconstructed dissolved oxygen was similar to
decadal variance in modern dissolved oxygen and reduced relative to
Holocene-scale changes in shallower basins.