Features of sedimentation in the Black Sea

The data of a fundamental publication [30] were used as the basis for creat ing a digital database on the seismostratigraphy of the sedimentary cover o f the Black Sea basin. From these data, five maps of isopachous contour lin es were compiled referring to the Quaternary, Pliocene, Middle-Late Miocene , Early Miocene-Oligocene, and Eocene-Paleocene epochs. In the Eocene-Paleo cene, the average rates of sediment accumulation in the eastern and western parts of the Black Sea were comparable. In the Oligocene, the sedimentatio n rates in the western part of the Black Sea were 30% greater than those in its eastern part. This situation is maintained throughout the Miocene and the Pliocene, which may be related to the presence of a series of depressio ns, which prevented the sediments from direct delivery to the eastern basin . In the Quaternary, the rates of sedimentation in the western part of the sea were 200% greater than those in the eastern part. Most reasonably, this may be explained by the supply of enormous amounts of sediments with the D anube River runoff.