Revisiting elemental geochemistry in surface sediments of the Ulleung Basin, East/Japan Sea: Signals from ocean dumping materials.

A total of 222 surface sediments were collected in the Ulleung Basin, southwestern East/Japan Sea, from the coast to the basin and analyzed for grain size, total organic carbon, biogenic silica and major and trace elements. The metal concentrations of the surface sediments were highly spatially variable, and their distributions were grouped into four types by factor analysis: waste dumping materials (Cr, Cu, Zn, Sn, Sb, and Pb); detrital materials (Al, Fe, and Cs); suboxic diagenetic materials (Mn, Mo, Co, and Ni); and anoxic diagenetic materials (Cd and U). From core samples collected near the dumping site, approximately the top 10 cm was well mixed in the ²¹⁰ Pb _ex profiles and highly enriched in the above metals related to dumping materials. The enrichment factor of Sn indicates dumping materials well, and its distribution can be used to estimate the dispersion range of the dumped material in this basin.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
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