The Holocene. Even though sedimentary processes which include hydrodynamic sorting and mechanical destruction during transport and weathering can fractionate heavy mineral assemblages, they’ve long been utilized as productive proxies of sediment provenance [9,10]. Ziritaxestat supplier Several heavy mineral research happen to be carried out on possible provenance places for the SOT [115]. Having said that, in the past, a certain size of 6325 was usually chosen for heavy mineral evaluation, thereby minimizing the particle size effect or the influence of hydrodynamic separation [16,17], and then reflecting as significantly as you possibly can the mineral composition with the river in to the sea and the nature in the bearing rock [13,15]. Nonetheless, prior studies reported that the equivalent sedimentation impact could possibly lead to considerable variations inside the composition of heavy minerals with various grain sizes in the exact same sample. The narrower the grain size range, the additional important the distinction within the composition might be [9]. Meanwhile, it was regarded as that the heavy minerals having a higher particular gravity are comparatively enriched within the fine-grained components [18]. Therefore, if 6325 is chosen, the content material of heavy minerals within the variety 63 might be considerably underestimated. Thus, by expanding the particle size range to conduct a additional comprehensive evaluation of the composition of heavy minerals, it really is feasible to remove the deviation from the mineral composition triggered by the difference within the particle size choice [19]. Within the southern Okinawa Trough, as opposed to the extensive application of geochemical and clay mineral indicators, couple of research have focused around the provenance significance of heavy minerals. Additionally, there have not been any reports on the assemblages of full-size, fraction heavy minerals within this area. In this study, we report the full-size fraction heavy mineral assemblages from H4-S2, aiming to (1) reveal the heavy mineral assemblages traits of sediments inside the SOT since the late Holocene; (two) to decide the provenance of sediments within the SOT since the late Holocene; (3) to propose a mineral index to get a provenance analysis to distinguish the sediments from the Yangtze River, the East China Sea shelf, and Taiwan rivers; (4) to discover the applicability of TESCAN Integrated Mineral Analyzer (TIMA) technique to the study of heavy mineral assemblages of marine sediments. two. Supplies and Strategies 2.1. Components and Age Model The sediment core H4-S2 (477 cm in length, 122 37 19.702 E, 24 52 49.906 N) was located around the SOT (Nitrocefin manufacturer Figure 1) using a water depth of 1505 m. This study focused on heavy mineral assemblages from 5 layers of H4-S2 (266 cm, 11252 cm, 19232 cm, 33272 cm, and 40242 cm). The age model was constructed on the basis information on the accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14 C dating of planktonic foraminifera picked from 6 layers (Figure two). The depositional age at 477 cm was 624a BP [20], using a sedimentation rate of 0.69 cm/yr. The depositional ages of five samples were established by the Bacon software package (version two.three.9.1) (Table 1) [21].Table 1. The depth, deposition ages, and heavy mineral grains of five layers in H4-S2. Sample OTS-1 OTS-2 OTS-3 OTS-4 OTS-5 Depth (cm) 266 11252 19232 33272 40242 Deposition Ages (cal. yr AD) 1954993 1828879 1748793 1580641 1536544 Heavy Mineral Grains 97 425 634 240Minerals 2021, 11, x FOR PEER Overview Minerals 2021, 11, 1191 Minerals 2021, 11, x FOR PEER REVIEW3 of 11 3 11 three ofofFigure Map of the study region displaying the l.