Bulk and refractory organic carbon composition in 210Pb- and 137Cs-dated sediment cores from the East China Sea

We show the continuous high-resolution records of sedimentary organic carbon (OC) burial in the inner shelf of the East China Sea, spanning from the 1850s to the present, to reveal the past linkages in terrestrial OC cycling and fluvial sediment dynamics with climate changes and perturbed by direct human interventions. We find that humans have decreased the accumulation of terrestrial OC in marine sediments while increasing the export of riverine refractory OC.

The uploaded datasets included the concentration of both total and refractory organic carbon and their elemental ratio (C/N), stable carbon (δ13Corg), nitrogen (δ15N) isotopic composition, the estimated proportions of terrestrial OC (both total and refractory fractions), as well as the measured dry bulk density (DBD) in the core C0702 from the East China Sea. This dataset also includes compiled OC data in 14 210Pb and/or 137Cs-dated sediment cores from the East China Sea.