Climatic and environmental changes during the last glacial-interglacial transition in the Ross Sea, Antarctica.

Four sediment cores (ANTA99-cJ3, ANTA95-98C, KI13-C1 and KI13-C2) and two box cores (KI13-bc2 and KI13-bc4), collected in the different geological settings of the Joides Basin-Central Basin area (Ross Sea, Southern Ocean), were studied in the framework of the Italian Antarctic Project ROSSLOPE (Past and present sedimentary dynamic in the ROSS Sea: a multidisciplinary approach to study the continental SLOPE). In this work we consider only the time interval spanning from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) to the Present in order to investigate the palaeoclimatic and palaeoceanographic evolution of the western Ross Sea during the last deglaciation phase. Based on the abundance pattern of diatom and foraminiferal assemblages as well as different geochemical and sedimentological properties (organic carbon, grain size, biogenic silica and CaCO3 content), we propose a climatic and environmental reconstruction of the last glacial/interglacial transition in this regions of the Southern Ocean.