Université de Fribourg

New insights on coral mound development from groundtruthed high-resolution ROV-mounted multibeam imaging

Lim, Aaron ; Huvenne, Veerle A.I. ; Vertino, Agostina ; Spezzaferri, Silvia ; Wheeler, Andrew J.

In: Marine Geology, 2018, vol. 403, p. 225–237

Currents play a vital role in sustaining and developing deep water benthic habitats by mobilising food and nutrients to otherwise relatively barren parts of the seabed. Where sediment supply is significant, it can have a major influence on the development and morphology of these habitats. This study examines a segment of the Belgica Mound Province, NE Atlantic to better constrain the...

Université de Fribourg

Large-scale paleoceanographic variations in the western Mediterranean Sea during the last 34,000 years: From enhanced cold-water coral growth to declining mounds

Stalder, Claudio ; El Kateb, Akram ; Vertino, Agostina ; Rüggeberg, Andres ; Camozzi, Osvaldo ; Pirkenseer, Claudius M. ; Spangenberg, Jorge E. ; Hajdas, Irka ; Rooij, David Van ; Spezzaferri, Silvia

In: Marine Micropaleontology, 2018, vol. 143, p. 46–62

Quantitative and qualitative analyses of cold-water coral (CWC) fragments from two sediment cores obtained from the Melilla Mounds Field (MMF) in the Alboran Sea, western Mediterranean Sea, reveal an alternation of periods dominated by distinct CWC species. The lower parts of the cores are dominated by the CWC species Lophelia pertusa, which is successively replaced in the upper parts by the...

Université de Fribourg

An overview on cold-water coral ecosystems and facies

Vertino, Agostina ; Spezzaferri, Silvia ; Rüggeberg, Andres ; Stalder, Claudio ; Wheeler, Andrew J.

In: Atlas of benthic foraminifera from cold-water coral reefs - Special Publication / Cushman Foundation For Foraminiferal Research, 2014, vol. 44, p. 12-19

Université de Fribourg

Microfossils, a key to unravel cold-water carbonate mound evolution through time: Evidence from the eastern alboran sea

Stalder, Claudio ; Vertino, Agostina ; Rosso, Antonietta ; Rüggeberg, Andres ; Pirkenseer, Claudius ; Spangenberg, Jorge E. ; Spezzaferri, Silvia ; Camozzi, Osvaldo ; Rappo, Sacha ; Hajdas, Irka

In: PLoS ONE, 2015, vol. 10, no. 10, p. e0140223

Cold-water coral (CWC) ecosystems occur worldwide and play a major role in the ocean's carbonate budget and atmospheric CO2 balance since the Danian (~65 m.y. ago). However their temporal and spatial evolution against climatic and oceanographic variability is still unclear. For the first time, we combine the main macrofaunal components of a sediment core from a CWC mound of the Melilla Mounds...