Notice of RetractionHeavy mineral analysis and formation of high-terraces gravels at the lower Yangtze River

Notice of Retraction

After careful and considered review of the content of this paper by a duly constituted expert committee, this paper has been found to be in violation of IEEE´s Publication Principles.

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High terraces gravels largely distribute at the lower Yangtze costal area from Jiujiang to Nanjing. Although has been focused ever since the first half of the last century, the formation of these gravels are still controversial. Heavy mineral analysis was performed on the very fine sand fraction (63-125μm) for bulk samples and heavy minerals were separated using bromoform with specific gravity of 2.89. The characteristic mineral and heavy mineral assemblages were used for the source tracing and formation of these gravels. The result shows that heavy mineral assemblages of these different gravels are almost the same, especially samples within the same gravel profile. It indicates that these gravels were formed by the modern Yangtze River. The pebbles were derived from the local source while the interstitial materials and sand lens were derived from the modem Yangtze River. Combined with the previous studies, we conclude that these gravels are formed by the modern Yangztze River at the Early Pleistocene.