Paleoenvironmental studies of the Korean peninsula inferred from diatom assemblages

This paper presents a diatom history for Korea and reviews some recent diatom analyses to reconstruct past environmental changes from terrestrial, coastal, and marine sediments around the Korean peninsula. Since they were first reported by Skvortzov in 1936, fossil diatom studies in Korea have been conducted mainly from the Neogene and Quateranary strata of the Pohang and Gampo regions of Gyeongsang-bukdo, and the Chulwon and Bukpyeong areas of Gangwon-do on the eastern coast of the Korean peninsula, as well as from Holocene strata of the Ilsan area of the Han River estuary, tidal sediments off Mankyung-Dongjin, Namyang, and Hampyeong Bay, and the Cheollipo area on the western coast of the Korean peninsula. Most of the coastal diatoms provided further information on sea level trends, climatic changes, and coastal evolution for much of the Holocene in the Yellow Sea. Recent studies of fossil diatoms from the Ulleung Basin, East/Japan Sea, also indicate fluctuations in sea surface temperatures, in the influx and circulation of the Tsushima Warm Current, and in sea levels during the Late Quaternary.