Holocene environmental changes of the Godavari Delta, east coast of India, inferred from sediment core analyses and AMS 14C dating

Abstract

The Godavari delta in India is a major wave dominated delta of a tropical monsoon-fed river with one of the largest sediment deliveries in the world. While several earlier studies revealed the nature of landforms and progradation style of the delta plain during the Holocene, the present study attempts to reconstruct the depositional environment of the Godavari delta through the analysis of core sediment and accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) 14C dating from three locations.

The sediment core obtained from a 27.06 m deep borehole at Vilasavilli (VV) supported by 13 14C dates revealed the complete succession of the Holocene deposits unconformably overlying Pleistocene sediments. Textural analysis indicates the lower upward-fining and upper upward-coarsening units in the Holocene succession. Total organic carbon (TOC)/total nitrogen (TN) ratios of > 20; high content of TOC around 1.5–2.5%; and black to very dark colored sediment throughout the muddy part of the Holocene succession indicated a predominance of terrigenous material.

The VV core and two other cores (DRP and SDG) with 14 14C dates indicated the thickness of the Holocene sediments in the Godavari delta plain is in the order of ~ 20–50 m, unconformably resting on a seaward sloping Pleistocene basement. Sediment facies and sediment accumulation of the three cores show the evolution of the Godavari delta. A transgressive phase is recognized as an upward-fining succession in the VV core, 8.4–8.0 cal ky BP, followed by a low accumulation period, 8.0–6.3 cal ky BP including the Holocene maximum transgression in the Godavari delta. After 6.3 cal ky BP, areas of high accumulation rates have changed laterally between the central part (VV site) and southwestern part (DRP and SDG sites), may be controlled by the location of river-mouths.

Further analysis coupled with 11 more 14C dates compiled from earlier works indicated that the strandplain of the Godavari delta prograded seaward in three stages, and that the rate of progradation accelerated during the past ~ 3 ky, particularly in the last millennium. However, pronounced shoreline erosion led to a net negative growth of the delta during the recent decades due to sediment retention by upstream dams. Although this study provided insights into the sedimentation patterns and rate of seaward progradation of the Godavari delta, further studies on three-dimensional volume analysis of the deltaic sediments are necessary to estimate the overall rates of past sediment discharge and the Holocene growth of the Godavari delta.