Provenance of Cored Sediments from Active Margin off Southwestern Taiwan Deduced from Geochemical Constraints.

The cored sediments sampled by R/V Marion Dufrense in the active margin off southwestern Taiwan on the east side of the Manila Trench are mostly muds consisting mainly of quartz, feldspar, illite, chlorite + kaolinite with a trace amount of montmorillonite. The cored sediments have higher Fe, Ti, Cr, Cs, Li, Ni, and V but lower Ca, Na, Mn, Hf, Nb, Sr, Ta, U and Zr contents when compared with the upper continental crust (UCC, Taylor and McLennan, 1985). The Eu/Eu* ratios of the sediments averaging 0.69 indicate that the recycling effect on the Eu anomaly may be minor and the contribution of mafic source rock was unimportant, which can also be depicted in the La-Th-Sc plot (Cullers, 1994) showing a 'mixed origin' close to the felsic end member. The chemistry of the cored sediment can be explained by a mixing model designed by Ho and Chen (1996) with four end members i.e., greywacke, shale, quartzite and limestone, which are widely distributed in the Cenozoic formations of southern Taiwan with greywacke as the dominant contributor followed by shale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]