Dating the Sea of Marmara sediments by a uniform mixing model

The sedimentation rates and 210Pb fluxes on sediment surfaces were measured in the north, northwestern and southwestern parts of the Sea of Marmara. Each core had varying thickness of constant 210Pb activity regions followed by a decreasing part with sediment depth. The sedimentation rates of the samples collected from the Bosporus and the Dardanelles could not be analysed due to the homogenization of activity in the strong currents of these straits. A uniform mixing model is proposed for the simultaneous analysis of sedimentation rates, 210Pb fluxes and mixing depths from the experimental data. In this model, the parameters were obtained by minimizing the multi-dimensional parameter space using a grid search algorithm. The 210Pb fluxes were found to be about 0.048 Bq cm−2 year−1 for all sampling sites. The mass sedimentation rates were 0.19 and 0.073 g cm−2 year−1 at the shelves of the Bosporus and the Dardanelles and 0.055 and 0.064 g cm−2 year−1 in the northwestern and middle northern basins, respectively, of the Sea of Marmara.