Oceanogaphical and geological background

Abstract

The South China Sea (SCS) embraces an area of about 3.5 x 106 km2 and extends from the Tropic of Cancer to the Equator, across over 20 degrees of latitude in the west Pacific. Since the last decade, the SCS has become the focus in studying the East Asian monsoon, like the Arabian Sea for the Indian monsoon (Wang B. et al. 2003). The SCS offers an ideal locality for high-resolution paleoceanographic researches in the low-latitude western Pacific because its hemipelagic sediments often register higher deposition rates and its carbonate compensation depth (CCD) is generally deeper than neighboring sea basins (Wang P. 1999).