(Paleo)oceanographic Dynamics, Sedimentary Processes, and Ecosystem Response to a Continuously Changing Mediterranean Hydroclimate

Dear Colleagues,

The tendency toward climate change has been one of the most surprising outcomes of the study of Earth history. Over the last decades, considerable interest has arisen in the role of the subtropical oceans in climate change and, in particular, oceanic sub-basins and marginal seas, which are often more responsive to paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic changes than the global oceans because of their smaller size and partial isolation. As an example, the small volume of the Mediterranean Sea, compared with ocean basins, causes changes in its climate that can be recorded virtually instantaneously in palaeoceanographic and sedimentological proxy data, such as stable isotopes and geochemical ratios, as well as microfossil abundances. Marine geological dynamics, such as sea-level changes, environmental parameters, sedimentary cyclicity, and climate are strongly related through a direct exchange between the oceanographic and atmospheric systems. Moreover, anthropogenic activities affect the natural evolution by changing both the seawater environmental parameters and the ratio between terrigenous and marine sediments, which is further reflected in the marine biota.

This Special Issue aims to provide an overview of the interplay of all these processes across a variety of settings (coastal to open marine) and timescales (early Cenozoic to modern). Among the priorities are the hydroclimate reconstructions using integrated geochemical and/or paleontological proxies measured from different Mediterranean sub-basins. We also encourage contributions outlining the applications of novel state-of-the-art techniques that provide important information on this topic.

Dr. George Kontakiotis
Dr. Stergios D. Zarkogiannis
Prof. Dr. Assimina Antonarakou
Guest Editors

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• impact of climate change in open marine and coastal ecosystems
• environmental stressors on Mediterranean (paleo)archive
• biomonitoring advances in recent and holocene marine ecosystems
• marine sediment cores and outcrops as evidence of climate variation over time
• water quality and ecological aspects (species richness, diversity) of aquatic ecosystems
• natural and human (e.g., ocean acidification, water pollution, abnormal foraminiferal types) environmental stressors in marine sedimentary basins
• anthropogenic impacts on coastal marine environments
• invasive alien species in the Mediterranean sea
• orbital sedimentary cyclicity (e.g., sapropels, diatomites) and relationship with climate
• changes in hydrodynamics, sediment dynamics, and biotic response to climate-induced extreme geological events (e.g., MSC, MMCO, PETM) within the Mediterranean basin
• state-of-the-art geochemical (e.g., TEX86, Uk’37, Mg/Ca, Sr/Ca, Na/Ca, Δ47) and paleontological (e.g., corals, foraminifera, nannofossils, otoliths, bivalves, speleothems) proxies to reconstruct environmental parameters (e.g., SST, SSS)
• relative sea level change, coastal vulnerability, and geomorphological/paleogeographical reconstructions
• bio-cyclostratigraphic correlations towards the paleoceanographic and paleoclimatic evolution of the Mediterranean Sea
• remote sensing applications and climate modeling