The Assessment of Sediment Ages Determination of Bhavanapadu Mangrove Ecosystem, North Coastal Andhra Pradesh, East Coast of India.

The present paper aimed to study the Two 20 cm sediment cores were collected with a D-section corer in the Bhavanapadu(BP), Meghavaram (MV) mangrove forest and analyzed for ²¹⁰Pbex (excess ²¹⁰Pb) in order to understand the sedimentation pattern. The activities of ²¹⁰Pb along with the ²⁰⁸Po tracer were measured by Alpha Spectrometry on a silicon surface barrier detector connected to a multi channel analyzer. Sedimentation rates were determined applying²¹⁰Pb dating method and found to vary between 0.94–1.11 cm year⁻¹. The highest accumulation rates were recorded near the river mouth and the lowest rates at the downstream. Assuming that the sedimentation rate values are accurate, this implies that the sediments in the upper 100 cm at Bhavanapadu (BP), Meghavaram (MV) mangrove forest were deposited during the past several years ago.