Date of Award

Spring 5-8-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science (BS)

Department

Marine Science

College

College of Science

First Advisor

Zhixiong Shen

Abstract/Description

Grain size analysis (GSA) is widely used in sedimentology and paleoenvironmental reconstruction; however, its utility can be constrained by the presence of organic matter. This study assesses the impact of organic matter through the analysis and comparison of untreated and hydrogen peroxide-treated samples. Organic-rich samples from the Thousand Acre marsh in Georgetown, SC, were subjected to three treatments: untreated, standard, and enhanced. Grain size distribution was measured for each of these treatments using a CILAS 1190 laser diffraction particle analyzer, and organic matter was quantified by loss-on-ignition (LOI). Results show that untreated samples are significantly coarser than treated samples, demonstrating that organic matter biases samples toward the larger end of the grain-size distribution. In contrast, among the treated samples, no statistically significant difference in treatment severity was observed, indicating diminishing returns with each treatment and, therefore, that further hydrogen peroxide treatments do not affect grain size analysis data. This suggests that removing organic matter is necessary for accurate GSA data, and that multiple treatments do not significantly improve results.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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