In week five I continued with the sampling, sieving and looking through section five's samples.
As a whole, section five had far more forams per gram than section four (as shown below). The depths on the graph correspond to the total depth of the entire core which is 728cm. Section four is between 428cm and 328cm and section five is between 328cm and 228cm.
The greater number of forams likely meant that section five formed under oxygenated conditions which allowed the forams to both survive and reproduce to a greater extent than the forams found in section four.
Interestingly, at 305cm four forams found within section five were stained orange. These stains likely came from the presence of iron on the Baltic Sea floor.
Ostracods (a class of the Crustacea, sometimes known as seed shrimp) were present within section 5, unlike in section 4. They appeared in layers 263cm, 231cm and 327cm but do not appear anywhere else within the entire core.
Also, agglutinated forams (formed through the adhesion of sand grains and sediment to form their shells) appeared at 233cm. There have been no other agglutinated forams present throughout both sections 4 and 5. Agglutinated forms differ from Elphidium forams (my main focus) because Elphidium forams have calcium carbonate shells not sand and grain shells and they are of a different shape.
Section five's highest abundance of forams per gram was 23.25g at a depth of 299cm (a total of 465 forms were found within the 20g sample).
In week six I will conduct XRF scanning and will also complete some data handling for my research. The XRF scans will show us the elements present within the core section like manganese, calcium and iron.
Please sign in
If you are a registered user on Laidlaw Scholars Network, please sign in