Geology and Geochemistry of Recent Sediments from the Mediterranean Sea: Sediment Texture of Northeastern Mediterranean Basin

Copyright © 2013 Semal Yemenicioglu, Sakir Cagan Tunc. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Surface sediment samples collected from the north-eastern Mediterranean were analysed for their geochemical and sedimentological properties. The sediment texture of the studied area represents a wide variety of sediment types (ex-tending from sandy gravel to mud) and is characterized by relatively high mud content with varying silt and clay frac-tions. Due to the rich presence of biogenic materials, several coarse-grained sediment patches displaying high CaCO3 content occur. The organic carbon content of the sediments mainly reflects the standard Mediterranean production of organic matter. There are some exceptional areas in coastal zones which result from pollution by perennial river discharge