Physicomechanical properties of the water-sediment barrier zone

The complex geoecological works carried out in the St. Anna Trough resulted in the detailed investigation of the water-sediment barrier zone. The physicomechanical properties such as the moisture, the moisture at the flowing boundary, the sedimentation rates, and the strength of the sediments measured and calculated for the upper 10-cm-thick layer of the bottom sediments were used as the main parameters characterizing the barrier zone. These data served as a basis for developing the model of the barrier zone with defining the lithogenesis stages: protosyngenesis??syngenesis??protodiagenegis??early diagenesis. The quantitative estimates of the environmental physicochemical properties presented in this work characterize each of these stages.