Sedimentary dynamics and foraminifera of reef areas in the RN Equatorial Shelf
Shelf, Sedimentary Facies, Diversity, Dominance, Foraminifera.
This work aims to characterize the bottom sediment in the Equatorial portion of the Rio Grande do Norte outter shelf, as well as to evaluate the environmental quality through the use of foraminifera species present in these environments, correlating these data with environmental parameters. To accomplish this objective, physical and chemical data collection of the water column via CTD and background sediment sampling using Van-Veen dredge were previously performed. The foraminifera were manually screened under an optical microscope and pasted into numbered plates according to species similarities. With CTD data and abundance of foraminifera, univariate statistical data (number of species, number of individuals, equatitivity, dominance and diversity) and multivariate statistics (PCA, MDS and CLUSTER) were developed in PRIMER software. The results showed that the organic matter contents were higher in the more distal portions, with similar results verified for the carbonate contents and for the abundance of foraminifera. In the outter shelf predominate bioclastic sands average to gravel, followed by siliciclastic sediments relicts in isolated points. The Cluster and PCA analyzes can separate the area into three main groups, where Group (I) represents the foraminifera that have the greatest diversity of species, with carbonaceous facies in greater representativity; the group (11) found greater dominance of individuals of the same species of foraminifera, and little diversity, being distributed mainly in bioclastic and biosiliciclastic sands with gravel, both in the carbonaceous and mixed facies; Group (III), represents the group of samples in which the foraminifera did not reveal significant results, for both diversity and dominance. Relations between foraminifera species indicate competitiveness among some, for example Quinqueloculina lamarckiana and Q. patagônica. The presence of the species Buccella peruviana supports the hypothesis of an environment exposed to the entrance of nutrients and cold waters, indicating resurgence.