Late Holocene Sediment Cores from Nara Inlet, Great Barrier Reef

Three sediment cores from Nara Inlet reveal a 3000-year record of mixed clastic and carbonate accumulation on the central Great Barrier Reef middle shelf. The top 3 meters of sediment, where carbonate content is 25.80% by weight, accumulated within the last three millennia. Data from Geoscience Australia indicates a system where both sediment types have decreased over time, with clastic input declining faster.

Use Cases

• Modeling historical sediment accumulation rates based on radiocarbon-dated core intervals.
• Analyzing the temporal shift from terrigenous to carbonate dominance in shelf sediments.
• Investigating the impact of fringing reef growth on sediment trapping and composition.
• Reconstructing late Holocene environmental changes on the Great Barrier Reef platform.

Strengths

• Core data covers a 3000-year temporal sequence.
• Quantitative composition data includes a carbonate component of 25.80% by weight.
• Analysis is spatially specific to a key depocenter (Nara Inlet) on the central Great Barrier Reef.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data may reflect geographic bias inherent to a single inlet study.

Provenance

Source

Geoscience Australia Data

Collection Method

Analysis of three sediment cores collected from Nara Inlet.

Time Range

Last 3000 years (Late Holocene)

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-30 13:12:41.826007; freshness should be verified.

Geography

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