Seasonal Variation and Preservation Potential of Tidal-Flat Sediments on the Tidal Flat of Gomso Bay, West Coast of Korea

Seasonal changes of topograpy, sediment grain size and accumulation rate on the Gomso-Bay tidal flat(Fig. 1), west coast of Korea, have studied in order to understand the seasonal accumulation pattern and preservation potential of tidal-flat sediments. Seasonal levelings across the tidal flat show that the landward movement of both intertidal sand shoals and cheiers accelerates during the winter and typhoon period, but it almost stops in summer when mud deposition is instead predominant on the middle to upper tidal flat. Seasonal variations of mean grain size were largest on the upper part of middle tidal flat where summer mud layers were eroded during the winter and typhoon periods(Fig. 2). Measurements of accululation depths from sea floor to basal plate reveal that accumulation rates were seasonally controlled according to the elevation of tidal-flat surface(Table 1) : the upper flat, where the accumulation rate of summer was generally higher than that of winter, was characterized by a continuous deposition throughout the entire year, whereas on the middle flat, sediment accumulations were concentrated in winter realtive to summer, and were intermittently eroded by typhoons. The lower tidal flat were deposited mostly in winter and eroded during summer typhoons. Cancores taken across the tidal flat reveal that sand-mud interlaers resulting from such seasonal changes of energy regime are preserved only in the upper part of the deposits and generally replaced by storm layers downcore(Fig. 3). Based on above results, it is suggested that the storm deposits formed by winter stors and typhoons would consist of the major part of the Gomso-Bay deposits(Fig. 4).