Monitoring dredged-dumped sediment dispersal off the Bay of Seine (N France) using environmental magnetism.
Jean Nizou  1@  , François Demory  2@  , Carole Dubrulle-Brunaud  1@  
1 : UMR 6143, Morphodynamique Continentale et Côtière
CNRS : UMR6143
Caen University, CNRS UMR 6143, Morphodynamique Continentale et Côtière, 14000 Caen, France -  France
2 : Centre européen de recherche et d'enseignement de géosciences de l'environnement  (CEREGE)  -  Site web
Aix Marseille Université, INSU, Institut de recherche pour le développement [IRD], CNRS : UMR7330
Europôle Méditerranéen de l'Arbois - Avenue Louis Philibert - BP 80 - 13545 Aix-en-Provence cedex 4 -  France

In this study, we developed a novel approach for fingerprinting dredged-dumped sediments at sea using magnetic susceptibility. Several magnetic measurements were performed on discrete sedimentary samples from the dredged areas in the Seine river and from the Bay of Seine seafloor before and after dumping. The dredged sediments showed higher susceptibility values than the undisturbed seafloor, which allowed the mapping of the dispersion of dredged-dumped sediments. In the vicinity of the coast and the estuary, high-susceptibility terrestrial input from rivers could also be mapped by this technique, therefore monitoring of the dumping by the susceptibility proxy is limited to the offshore areas. This susceptibility signal is controlled by the ferromagnetic fraction of the sediment. Furthermore, a constant magnetite-dominated magneto-mineralogy is observed in the study area. In addition to the susceptibility, a magnetic grain size parameter of the low-coercive fraction was also found to be sensitive to dumping. Both tracers showed an in-progress resilience of the sedimentary environment during a six-month survey.


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