Records of biogenic carbon parameter concentrations from sediment core GeoB19927-3 during the Holocene

The dataset contains concentrations of bioproductivity parameters from sediment samples from sediment core GeoB19927-3 (73°35,26' N, 58°05,66' W) located in Southern Melville Bay (Baffin Bay). The dataset covers the depth interval between 760-0 cm top depths, corresponding to 7.7 kyrs BP – present. The core was taken at 932 meters of water depth by gravity coring during cruise MSM44 in 2015 (Dorschel et al., 2015). The core consists of 1147 cm of sediment. The chronology has been provided by Saini et al. (2020). Excess lead is present down to 4.5 cm core depth, indicating that the core top is of recent age and only experienced minor disturbance during coring. In the upper 25 cm, the sampling for palynology was made at 1 cm interval, which corresponds to a temporal resolution of 30 years. Within the 25 cm to 280 cm interval every 5 cm and within the 280 cm to 760 cm interval every 10 cm were sub-sampled for palynology and all other analysis. Palynology sample processing followed the procedure for palynological preparation described in Vernal et al. (2010). The taxonomy of dinocysts used here was based on Rochon et al. (1999) and de Vernal et al. (2020). Organic linings of foraminifera were counted on the basis of the marker-grains method (Matthews, 1969) by adding a capsule of Lycopodium clavatum spores. Only complete linings were considered. For foraminifera analysis between 4-16 grams of freeze-dried sediment samples were wet sieved over a 63 µm mesh sieve and oven-dried at ~50 °C for one day. The whole fraction > 63 µm was picked and counted for planktonic and benthic foraminifers. Planktonic and benthic specimens and their fragments were sorted into two groups and separately weighed to six decimal places using a Sartorius microbalance. Each sample was weighed five times to determine the average weight of their accumulative shells. Benthic samples were analysed with attention given to the five species yielding acid-resistant organic linings (B. elegantissima, M. zandamee, E. excavatum, C. lobatulus, C. wuellerstorfi).