Planktonic Foraminifera Diversity in the Sea of Okhotsk and Correlation to Past Climate Change

A. Romanova, N. Iurchenko

Far Eastern Geological Institute, Far Eastern Branch Russian Academy of Science, Vladivostok, Russia.

DOI: 10.4236/gep.2014.23011                

Abstract

80 sediment stations and 4 sediment cores collected in the Sea of Okhotsk were used in this study in order to reveal additional proxy for past climate reconstruction based on planktonic foraminifera. Variation in diversity indices (Simpson, Shannon and equitability indices) along the sea became additional criteria for 5 biogeographical provinces based on planktonic foraminifera. All of them show different structure aspects of the planktonic foraminifera assemblages that is very informative in cases of high relative abundance of N. pachyderma sin. and influence of carbonate dissolution factor. During the last 100 ky the diversity indices were changed and we can assume the migration of biogeographical provinces borders: borders of the Northern province were mov- ed to the central part in cold MIS 2, 4, structure of assemblages during MIS 3, 5 was close to the modern Central province but characterized by low total foraminiferal abundance in the sediments. The Simpson and Shannon indices are more sensitive to changes in structure of planktonic foraminifera assemblages when equitability index varies lightly during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene.

Keywords

Planktonic Foraminifera, Diversity Indexes, Late Pleistocene—Holocene, The Sea of Okhotsk

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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