Late Holocene Sediment Cores from Nara Inlet, Central Great Barrier Reef

Three sediment cores from Nara Inlet in the Whitsunday Islands provide data on sediment accumulation over the last 3000 years. The cores contain a mix of terrigenous clay and shallow marine carbonate, with the carbonate component averaging 25.80% by weight. This dataset, sourced from the Australian Ocean Data Network, characterizes a tropical mixed clastic/carbonate system on the middle shelf of the central Great Barrier Reef platform.

Use Cases

• Modeling sediment accumulation rates over time based on radiocarbon-dated core intervals.
• Analyzing changes in clastic versus carbonate abundance over the late Holocene period.
• Investigating the influence of fringing reef growth on terrigenous sediment input.
• Reconstructing paleoenvironmental conditions on the middle shelf of the Great Barrier Reef.

Strengths

• Includes radiocarbon ages providing temporal control for the top 3 meters of sediment.
• Quantifies sediment composition with a specific carbonate weight percentage of 25.80%.
• Covers a distinct 3000-year time span for the late Holocene period.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Australian Ocean Data Network

Collection Method

Three sediment cores were collected from Nara Inlet for analysis.

Time Range

Late Holocene, specifically the last 3000 years.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-23 02:44:32.182310; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Nara Inlet, Whitsunday Islands, central Great Barrier Reef platform, Australia.