Caterina Morigi

• Associate Professor
• Professor (Associate) at University of Pisa

Marine microfossils record oceanographic changes that are closely linked to climate variability. We use diatoms, planktic foraminifera, and calcareous nannofossils to reconstruct the paleoceanographic evolution along the western margin of Spitsbergen (Arctic) during the last 10 kyr BP. The data are compared with other records from the western margi...

Data on marine microfossil assemblage composition has multiple applications. Initially, it was primarily used for (chrono)stratigraphy and palaeoecology, but these data are now also widely used to study evolutionary and ecological processes, such as past biodiversity and its links with environmental dynamics, or to provide a basis for conservation...

Identifying key environmental changes is important to understand the processes that govern the Earth’s climate system and all its interacting components. Micropaleontological proxies are one of the most used proxies, being able to connect abundances of species to changes in the physiochemical characteristics of the environment. In this context, for...

High Latitude fjords can serve as sediment trap, bearing different type of proxies, from geochemical to micropaleontological ones, making them exceptional tools for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. However, some unconventional proxies can be present and can be used to depict a comprehensive and exhaustive interpretation of past changes. Here, stu...

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New carbon isotope results obtained from cores from the Fehmarn Belt (German Basin) and hitherto non-published, detailed results obtained from brachiopods collected in the 1970s from the Hemmoor section, NW Germany, present the opportunity to revise the holostratigraphy of the Danish Basin and erect a complete chronostratigraphical scheme for the u...

The Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) was defined based on the low stand sea-level records from the most recent period when global ice sheets reached their maximum volume, between 26,500 and 19,000 years before present. The end of this cold period was the last glacial termination (T1), occurred between 20 and 11.7 ka BP marking the transition to the curre...

High Latitude fjords can serve as sediment trap, bearing different type of proxies, from geochemical to micropaleontological ones, making them exceptional tools for paleoenvironmental reconstruction. However, some unconventional proxies can be present and can be used to depict a comprehensive and exhaustive interpretation of past changes. Here, stu...

The objective of this study was to reconstruct the last century’s climatic oscillations in the Arctic region around the Fram Strait using high-resolution analysis of foraminiferal assemblages as proxies for surface and deep-water mass properties. In this area, warm Atlantic water masses are advected to the Arctic Ocean through the West Spitsbergen...

Antarctic fjords and coastal bays are excellent traps for sediment and represent key areas for high-resolution investigation of past environmental conditions. Robertson Bay is an understudied coastal area located at the confluence of the Ross Sea and the Southern Ocean. Recently obtained seafloor morphology data indicate the presence of a cross-she...

Despite the observation that we are witnessing a true oxygen crisis, the ocean deoxygenation theme is getting less attention from the media and population compared to other environmental stressors concerning climate change. The current ocean oxygen crisis is characterized by a complex interplay of climatic, biological, and oceanographic processes a...

The late Maastrichtian Rørdal Member of the Møns Klint Formation is a remarkable lithological unit of the Danish Basin, characterised by chalk-marl cyclicity, standing out of pure Maastrichtian white chalk within the Chalk Group. A cyclostratigraphic analysis across this unit suggests a control by orbital precession and a strong amplitude modulatio...

TR17-08, a marine sedimentary core (14.6 m), was collected during 2017 from the Edisto Inlet (Ross Sea, Antarctica), a small fjord near Cape Hallett. The core is characterized by expanded laminated sedimentary sequences making it suitable for studying submillennial processes during the Early Holocene. By studying different well-known foraminifera s...

We present an image dataset of monothalamous soft-shelled Foraminifera (Monothalamea, [1]), an important component of benthic foraminiferal assemblage in sediment cores collected during two oceanographic expeditions that contributed to the MSM30-CORIBAR project (Ice dynamics and meltwater deposits: coring in the Kveithola trough, NW Barents Sea). 9...

Calcareous nannofossils are the fossil equivalent of unicellular marine algae whose ecology and vital functions are driven by environmental parameters within the photic zone (e.g. temperature, salinity, sunlight and nutrient supply). High-resolution quantitative analyses were performed on the sediment core ND14Mbis collected in the northeastern par...

Human-induced carbon emissions are altering the modern climate, with severe repercussions on ecosystems. Among others, anthropogenic pressure is causing deoxygenation of the bottom water, with the widespread establishment of hypoxic zones in several Mediterranean areas. The geological archives allow investigating past deoxygenation dynamics (saprop...

We present the results o the tephrochronology study o a 14.49 m long marine sediment core (TR 17–08) collected in the Edisto Inlet, Ross Sea (Antarctica). The core contains our cryptotephra layers at 55–56, 512–513, 517–518, and 524–525 cm o depth, which have been characterised by a detailed description o the texture, mineral assemblage, and s...

The rapid response of benthic foraminifera to organic carbon flux to the seafloor makes them promising bioindicators for evaluating the organic carbon stored in marine sediments. Fjords have been described as hotspots for carbon burial, potentially playing a key role within the carbon cycle as climate regulators over multiple timescales. Neverthele...

Introduction: The PalaeoArc network and its predecessors PalaeoArc (Processes and Palaeo-Environmental Changes in the Arctic: From Past to Present) is an international network research programme, the aim of which is to understand and explain the climatically induced environmental changes in the Arctic that have taken place throughout the Quaternar...

Submarine morphology at the Western margin of the Svalbard archipelago, next to the Fram Strait, is the result of repeated advances and retreats of the Svalbard-Barents Sea Ice Sheet (SBSIS) during the Late Quaternary climatic changes. Contrarily to the continental shelf, that is periodically affected by grounded ice sheet erosion during glacial ma...

A reconstruction of the last 2,000 years BP of environmental and oceanographic changes on the western margin of Spitsbergen was performed using a multidisciplinary approach including the fossil assemblages of diatoms, planktic and benthic foraminifera and calcareous nannofossils and the use of geochemistry (X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, X-ray di...

Environmental changes for the past ca. 50 years were studied in a short sediment core from inner Krossfjorden, Svalbard, investigating benthic foraminifera and stable isotopes (δ¹⁸O, δ¹³C). A depth–age model based on anthropogenic ¹³⁷Cs time markers indicates that record covers the period from 1955 to 2007 and has sediment accumulation rates of ca....

A high-resolution analysis is being conducted on a core recovered from the Marsili Basin (Southern Tyrrhenian Sea) at 3400 m of water depth. In this contribution, we present preliminary results on the distribution of calcareous nannofossils studied in the 5.7 m-long NDT_09 core, composed of hemipelagic muds, distal turbidites, tephra and volcanocla...

We describe the population density, biodiversity and vertical distribution in the sediment of benthic foraminifera, and their relationship to environmental parameters, in the Kveithola Trough (NW Barents Sea). Two staining methods, Cell Tracker Green (CTG) and Rose Bengal (RB), were used to distinguish between living and dead tests. CTG proved to b...

Microplastic presence in benthic marine systems is a widely discussed topic. The influence of the natural matrix on microplastic distribution within the sedimentary matrix is often overlooked. Marine sediments from the western inner Oslofjord, Norway, were investigated for temporal trends, with a particular focus on the relationship between sedimen...

We examine the living and dead benthic foraminiferal assemblages from the topmost 10 cm (using 150 μm sieve fraction) of three sedimentological short records collected in the Kveithola Trough (northwest Barents Sea). Our aim is to reconstruct the environmental variations of the last decades, connected to the interaction among the North Atlantic and...

Abstract Book PalaeoArc2021

Globally, microplastics (MPs) are expected to accumulate at high concentrations in coastal sediments because these are readily linked with both land- and sea-based inputs, and changes in density and buoyancy facilitate sinking to the seabed. The Fjordic systems on the Norwegian coast have received some attention, reporting the presence of MPs in se...

We present the study of a composite, yet continuous sedimentary succession covering the time interval spanning 2.6–0.36 Ma in the intramontane basin of Anagni (central Italy) through a dedicated borecore, field surveys, and the review of previous data at the three palaeontological and archaeological sites of Colle Marino, Coste San Giacomo and Font...

In order to assess the quality of the Ha Long bay environment we performed sampling campaign in April 2003, January 2004 and more recently in August 2018. Sedimentological, microfauna and calcareous nannofossil analyses have been conducted on samples collected in different location of the bay. This allowed obtaining preliminary description of the s...

Time-series analyses of satellite images reveal that sea ice extent in the Ross Sea has experienced significant changes over the last 40 years, likely triggered by large-scale atmospheric anomalies. However, resolving how sea ice in the Ross Sea has changed over longer timeframes has until now remained more elusive. Here we used a laminated sedimen...

Kongsfjorden, a fjord in north-western Svalbard, is characterized by large environmental gradients driven by meltwater processes along the margins of tidewater glaciers and the inflow of relatively warm Atlantic Water, the main heat source for the European Arctic. These factors make Kongsfjorden a key area to investigate changes in the polar climat...

The full text available at: http://www.geologos.com.pl/pdf/Geologos-25-2-Lysa.pdf

The Kveithola Trough located in the NW Barents Sea is a peculiar system characterized by distinct geomorphological and environmental features which are expected to exert an important role on the distribution of benthic assemblages. In the present study we investigated for the first time the distribution of macrofaunal abundance, biomass and diversi...

The last 2000 years BP are important to understand the recent climate change. Moreover, the studies of environmental changes recorded in this period offer the possibility to understand how our climate can change in the near future. With these premises, we present the results of the combined study of diatom and foraminifera assemblages together with...

We present a paleomagnetic and rock magnetic data set from two long sediment cores collected from Bellsund and Isfjorden contourite drifts located on the eastern side of the Fram Strait (western Spitsbergen margin). The data set gave the opportunity to define the behavior of the past geomagnetic field at high latitude and to constrain the palaeocli...

Baleen whales (Mysticeti) are major ecosystem engineers, thanks to their enormous size and bulk filter feeding strategy. Their signature gigantism is thought to be a relatively recent phenomenon, resulting from a Plio-Pleistocene mode shift in their body size evolution. Here, we report the largest whale fossil ever described: an Early Pleistocene (...

The fan delta at the exit of Bosporus on the southwestern Black sea shelf.

A new integrated micropalaeontological study on planktonic and benthic foraminifera, calcareous nannofossils and diatoms was performed on three sediment cores from the Storfjorden Trough Mouth Fan to reconstruct the Late Quaternary palaeoenvironmental and climatic history. Two main intervals were discussed: the last deglaciation (16.2–11.7 ka BP) a...

Most environmental bio-monitoring methods using the species composition of marine faunas define the Ecological Quality Status of soft bottom ecosystems based on the relative proportions of species assigned to a limited number of ecological categories. In this study we analyse the distribution patterns of benthic foraminifera in the Mediterranean as...

The SSF funded project “Sediment flux from source to sink – the Coastal Link” is an international, multi-disciplinary research project aiming at understanding and quantifying sediment distribution patterns in Svalbard fjords. The current project (2016-2017) focuses on Kongsfjorden and Dicksonfjorden as representatives for glacially and non-glaciall...

Paleomagnetic and rock magnetic data were measured on glaciomarine silty-clay successions along an E-W sediment-core transect across the continental shelf and slope of the Kveithola paleo-ice stream system (south of Svalbard, north-western Barents Sea), representing a stratigraphic interval spanning the last deglaciation and the Holocene. The reco...

This paper concerns the relative sea-level changes associated with the Atlantic Patagonian coast derived from sea-level index points whose elevation was determined by a differential global position system (DGPS). Bioencrustations from outcrops located near Camarones, Chubut, Argentina, consist of autochthonous deposits characterized by Austromegaba...

The oceanographic and environmental characteristics of the Kveithola Glacial Trough, located south of Svalbard, have been investigated during the Eurofleets2-BURSTER project onboard the German icebreaker Polarstern (expedition PS99-1a, June, 19–20, 2016). The inner part of the glacial trough contains a complex sediment drift that deposited under pe...

A detailed geomorphological survey was undertaken in the area of Puerto Deseado (Santa Cruz Province, Argentina) to reconstruct the Relative Sea-level (RSL) position during the Last Interglacial highstand. The presence of active and well-preserved abrasive notches and inner margins of terraces related to the MIS5e and to the Holocene, measured with...

Eurofleets 2- BURSTER cruise was conducted onboard the German icebreaker RV Polarstern (Expedition PS99-1a) during June 13–23, 2016 (Bremerhaven-Longyearbyen) having the principal objective of investigating the hydrographic and bio-geochemical conditions of the Kveithola glacial trough (south of Svalbard), and to uncover the possible existence of g...

Climate changes are reflected in the Arctic ecosystem history over different timescales. We use a multi proxy-based approach for palaeoenvironmental and palaeoclimatic reconstructions, conducted on sediment cores, compared with summer insolation and Greenland ice core δ¹⁸O data in order to establish a framework for climate changes from Late Pleisto...

Integrated micropaleontological and sedimentological analyses on calcareous nannofossils, diatoms, planktonic and benthonic foraminifera and clay mineral assemblages have been performed on three sediment cores (Tab. 1), collected during the EGLACOM and CORIBAR projects from the Storfjorden-Kveithola depositional system (NW Barents Sea, Fig. 1). The...

The north-western continental margin of the Barents Sea represents the only gateway for deep-water masses moving between the North Atlantic and the Arctic Oceans. On this respect, the western Svalbard margin, located on the eastern side of the Fram strait, represents a key area to study the paleoceanographic variation of the North Atlantic/West Spi...

Benthic foraminifera are single-celled eukaryotes that make a protective organic, agglutinated or calcareous test. Some agglutinated, single-chambered taxa, including Psammophaga Arnold, 1982, retain mineral particles in their cytoplasm, but the selective mechanism of accumulation is not clear. Here, we report the ability of a foraminiferal species...

We report new data regarding the environmental history of the Taranto Area since MIS 11, which possibly led to the peculiar sediment preservation characterizing the Fronte Section. This section is a very promising candidate for the Upper Pleistocene GSSP. Some preliminary results achieved after the multiple core drilling at the Fronte locality (Tar...

Faxe quarry in Denmark exposes a unique cold-water coral mound complex from the Early Paleocene. It is the earliest known occurrence of its kind in the geological history and is considered as the predecessor to the extensively distributed modern deep and cold water coral mounds in the North Atlantic. The Faxe mound succession is up to 40 m thick an...

Beach ridges and lagoons are common features of the modern coastal landscape in much of Denmark and represent an important part of the Holocene raised marine deposits. We here present our results from investigations into the possibilities of retrieving continuous relative sea-level (RSL) information from these sedimentary archives, as facilitated b...

Foraminifera and ostracods have been quantitatively studied in core MD01-2472, from the upper continental slope (at water depth of 501 m), to evaluate their relationship with bottom water condition variability and decipher the control of the Levantine Intermediate Water (LIW) current on benthic faunas. The occurrence of reworked ostracod species (o...

The Eurofleets-2 PREPARED cruise was conducted during June 5–15, 2014 on board the Norwegian R/V G.O. Sars to investigate the present and past oceanographic flow regime and patterns around two contourite drifts located in the eastern side of the Fram Strait (south-western margin of Spitsbergen). To achieve the main objective of the project, we plan...

Foraminifera are eukaryotic unicellular microorganisms inhabiting all marine environments. The study of these protists has huge potential implications and benefits. They are good indicators of global change and are also promising indicators of the environmental health of marine ecosystems. Nevertheless, much remains to be learnt about foraminiferal...

A new study based on calcareous nannofossil and benthic and planktonic foraminifer biostratigraphy is presented for the upper Campanian – Maastrichtian chalk of the Femern Bælt (Denmark and Germany; Fig.1). The results are consistent with recent studies of the Danish chalk for this interval, allowing correlation across the Danish Basin and forming...

The Storfjorden sedimentary system (western Svalbard, NW Barents Sea) was investigated during the EGLACOM (Evolution of GLacial Arctic Continental Margin: the southern Svalbard ice stream-dominated sedimentary system) cruise, conceived within the International Polar Year (IPY) in 2007-2009, in combination with the IPY-Spanish SVAIS project. Four se...

Confined shallow-water environments are encountered many places along the coast of the inner Danish waters. Despite their common occurrence, these environments have rarely been studied as sedimentary archives. In this study we set out to trace back changes in relative sea-level and associated geomorphological responses in sediment cores retrieved f...

Confined shallow-water environments are encountered many places along the coast of the inner Danish waters. Despite their common occurrence, these environments have rarely been studied as sedimentary archives. In this study we set out to trace back changes in relative sea-level and associated geomorphological responses in sediment cores retrieved f...

The depositional history of the Storfjorden and Kveithola trough-mouth fans (TMFs) in the northwestern Barents Sea has been investigated within two coordinated Spanish and Italian projects in the framework of the International Polar Year (IPY) Activity 367, NICE STREAMS. The investigation has been conducted using a multidisciplinary approach to the...

Coastal lagoons are widely encountered in the inner Danish waters and distributed along gradients of post-glacial isostatic uplift. The morphology and sediment architecture of those lagoons and their associated barriers allows a dynamic interpretation of the processes determining their Holocene development. The aim of this study is to facilitate a...

Monothalamous foraminifera with organic and agglutinated test walls (“allogromiids” sensu lato) deserve attention because of their importance in deep-sea and shallow-water soft-bottom communities and their crucial phylogenetic position at the base of the foraminiferal evolutionary tree. However, our knowledge of the biodiversity and ecology of mono...

Cold-water coral (CWC) ecosystems are hotspots of macro- and microfaunal biodiversity and provide refuge for a wide variety of deep-sea species. We investigated how the abundance and biodiversity of ‘live’ (Rose Bengal stained) foraminifera varies with, and is related to, the occurrence of CWC on the Rockall Bank (NE Atlantic). Qualitative and quan...

In this study we investigate the taxonomic biodiversity of the microbenthos in sediment samples from a deep-water coral reef off the southeast Faroese Shelf.

We analyzed Mg/Ca ratios of the planktonic species Globigerinoides ruber (white) picked from 49 box core samples covering the whole Mediterranean Sea and 2 core tops from the Atlantic Ocean. Over the entire data set, we found no significant correlation between Mg/Ca and δ18O-derived calcification temperatures. This lack of correlation is chiefly du...

Benthic foraminifera are an important component of the marine biota, but protocols for investigating their viability and metabolism are still extremely limited. Classical studies on benthic foraminifera have been based on direct counting under light microscopy. Typically, these organisms are stained with Rose Bengal, which binds proteins and other...

In 2002, the Bosphorus outlet was mapped using an EM 300 multibeam echo-sounder together with a Chirp sonar system. This survey, carried out on board the Ifremer RV ‘Le Suroit’ in the frame of the BlaSON project, completes the data previously acquired directly at the mouth of the Bosphorus by Di Iorio et al. (1999) in the frame of a NATO SACLANT Un...

Early Paleocene cold-water coral reefs developed in the boreal sea of the Danish Basin, southern Scandinavia. The reefs initiated within a bryozoan mound dominated outer shelf setting in the mid-Danian time. The coral reefs are dominated by framework building Dendrophyllia candelabrum with minor and varying occurrences of Faksephyllia faxoensis and...

This paper presents geophysical and core data obtained from several marine geology surveys carried out in the western Black Sea. These data provide a solid record of water-level fluctuation during the Last Glacial Maximum in the Black Sea. A Last Glacial Maximum lowstand wedge evidenced at the shelf edge in Romania,Bulgaria, and Turkey represents t...

Benthic foraminifera are an important component of the marine living biota, but protocols for investigating their viability and metabolism are still extremely limited. Classical studies on benthic foraminifera have been based on direct counting under light microscopy. Typically these organisms are stained with Rose Bengal, which binds proteins and...

The north-western Black Sea shelf is the widest continental shelf of the Black Sea, where the Danube delta/prodelta system includes important records on the Black Sea water level fluctuations. This study integrates newly acquired high-resolution single channel seismic reflection profiles and Calypso piston cores recovered along a transect extending...

Data of megafauna biodiversity. Reported are: location, sampling period, habitat, station, latitude (Lat), longitude (Long), depth, sampling gear (trawl: c for commercial or OTMS), Species Richness (SR), number of individuals (N), Margalef index (D), Pielou index (J), ES(51), Shannon index (H′), Simpson (1−λ) and references included in Text S2. (0....