Quantification of the Pliocene-Pleistocene erosion of the Barents Sea from present-day bathymetry

We present an attempt to quantify the Tertiary and Quaternary erosion on the Barents Shelf in a two step model. The first step is a tectonically related uplift in the order of 500–2000 m of the NW Barents Shelf in the Early Tertiary with subsequent erosion in the Eocene-Miocene period and transport of 950,000 km3 of erosional products to the sedimentary basins on the southern and eastern Barents shelf and to the continental margins to west and north. The second step involves a regional glacial erosion in Pliocene-Pleistocene times with removal of 1,280,000 km3 of sediments that today are located in wedges along the western and northern Barents Shelf margins. With the present-day topography and bathymetry, the preglacial relief is reconstructed and used to calculate the glacial erosion by isostatic modelling. The results indicate that the total erosion increases from 500–700 m in the Southern Barents Sea, to an excess of 2000 m in a zone from Spitsbergen to Franz Josephs Land. Planimetering of this erosional map gives a total of 1,200,000 km3 of eroded material, which agrees with the estimated 1,280,000 km3 of material in the sedimentary wedges along the western and northern Barents Shelf Margin.