Assemblages, Provinces and Provenances of Heavy Minerals on the Shelf of the Southern Yellow Sea and Northern East China Sea

The surface sediment samples were collected from the shelf of the southern Yellow and the northern East China by using Ocean50 box corer. 380 sediment samples include the samples collected from the surveys under the projects Supplementary Survey of Geology and Geophysics in the Yellow and East China Sea and Sedimentary Dynamics and Paleoenvironmental Changes in the Yellow Sea. The sediments with grain size of 0.063 to 0.125 mm were chosen for the detrital mineral analysis, the data of 9 representative minerals were taken as variables, and the hierarchical cluster procedures were used to divide the study area into 4 heavy mineral assemblage provinces. The provinces objectively reflect the influence ranges of the Yellow River material, the Yangtze River material and the insitu material, and also show the influences of material source, hydrodynamics and sea bed weathering on heavy mineral distribution, so it can be concluded that the heavy minerals in shelf surface sediment in some areas have a convergent evolution effect.