- Startseite
- MARUM Research Seminar 2022
- Or M. Bialik
Miocene paleo productivity patterns in the Northern Indian Ocean
Presently, the northwestern Indian Ocean is a vibrant and dynamic oceanic region. It hosts large carbonate platforms and seasonal wind-driven upwelling, oxygen minimum zones and a multitude of ecological communities. This rich tapestry of marine productivity had not always had the current form. In this talk, I will discuss the how, why and when did these systems established. Through scientific drilling, mainly in the Arabian Sea and the Maldives, we will explore how carbonate production and primary productivity in the region has shifted through the Early and Middle Miocene. Using bulk elemental composition, facies, mineralogy and isotopic geochemistry, changes in the export of neritic material, pelagic productivity and subsurface water oxygenation can be tracked through this interval. These reveal that on shorter time scales, variability in productivity patterns are governed by changes in planetary insolation. But on longer time scales, these changes are fundamentally linked to the oceanographic rearrangement of the Miocene, the closure of the Tethyan seaway, the increased latitudinal thermal gradient and the initiation of the modern south Asian monsoonal system.
