Response of source-to-sink systems to major step-changes in environmental factors: the case study of the Barents Sea during the Permian-Triassic transition

Preliminary title: Response of source-to-sink systems to major step-changes in environmental factors: the case study of the Barents Sea during the Permian-Triassic transition

Supervisor(s): Christian Haug Eide (University of Bergen), Emmanuelle Pucéat (Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France), Pierre Pellenard (Université de Bourgogne, Dijon, France), William Helland-Hansen (University of Bergen), Benjamin Bellwald (Norwegian Geotechnical Institute, Oslo, Norway), Sverre Planke (University of Oslo, Volcanic Basin Energy Research, Oslo, Norway)

Project period: December 2020–December 2023

Funding: EU-funded and linked to S2S-Fututre ITN

Objective:

At the Permian-Triassic boundary, major eruptions and gas release of the Siberian Traps Large Igneous Provinces have been associated with huge environmental changes. Changes in the environment contained global warming, an increase of the average low latitude sea surface temperature by ~12°C, ocean acidification, increased nutrient and sediment fluxes to the oceans, atmospheric ozone destruction, and widespread pulses of marine euxinia and anoxia, which together lead to a major marine mass extinction.

The objective of this project is to understand how strong changes in environmental factors, such as those mentioned above, affect source-to-sink systems in deep time. Deposits from before, during and just after the Permian/Triassic transition is readily available for study in the Barents Sea, offering an excellent opportunity to study this issue. Therefore, I

(1) use sandstone petrology, U-Pb detrital zircon provenance analysis, sandstone proportions and sediment volumes to investigate catchment areas, and weathering types before and after the Permian-Triassic boundary event, to investigate sedimentological and palaeontological data to understand changes in the environmental conditions in the basin,

(2) reconstruct respective catchment areas and processes within before, during and after the transition,

(3) compare the first study area – specifically reasons in the respective catchment area, that led to the changes in the depositional environment – on Finnmark Platform, Northern Norway, to the second study area, which is situated on Svalbard,

(4) disentangle climatic effects from potential tectonic factors across the transition.