Seismic and core investigation on the modern Yellow River Delta reveals the development of the uppermost fluvial deposits and the subsequent transgression system since the postglacial period

Based on above evidences, we raised an evolutionary model of the postglacial depositional environment at the modern Yellow River Delta and adjacent marine areas, suggesting the study area evolved from riverine, estuarine, coastal, shoreface, neritic to final prodeltaic/deltaic environment since the Post-Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in relationship with eustatic and climatic events as well as sediment input. In the model, we redefined the two-phase channel systems that exhibited in our previous study (Liu et al., 2014) as the tributaries of the LGM paleo-Yellow River and the tidal/estuarine tidal channels that formed at the early Holocene. Besides, we speculated that two hiatuses/erosions occurred at Younger Dryas and ∼4-3 cal. kyr BP, and further divided the study area into three depositional zones based on their different sedimentation rates of the transgression system.