Five salt marsh sediment cores from different
parts of the Venice Lagoon were studied to determine their de
positional history and its relationshi
p with the environmental changes occurred during the
past
![](htt<font color=)
p://www.sciencedirect.com/scidirimg/entities/223c.gif" alt="not, vert, similar" border=0>100 years. X-radiogra
phs of the cores show no disturbance related to
particle mixing. Accretion rates were calculated using a constant flux model a
pplied to excess
p>210p>Pb distributions in the cores. The record of
p>137p>Cs fluxes to the sites, determined from
p>137p>Cs
profiles and the
p>210p>Pb chronologies, shows in
puts from the global fallout of
p>137p>Cs in the late 1950s to early 1960s and the Chernobyl accident in 1986. Average accretion rates in the cores are com
parable to the long-term average rate of mean sea level rise in the Venice Lagoon (
![](htt<font color=)
p://www.sciencedirect.com/scidirimg/entities/223c.gif" alt="not, vert, similar" border=0>0.25 cm y
p>−1p>) exce
pt for a core collected in a marsh
presumably affected by in
puts from the Dese River. Short-term variations in accretion rate are correlated with the cumulative frequency of flooding, as determined by records of Acqua Alta, in four of the five cores, suggesting that variations in the
phenomena causing flooding (such as wind
patterns, storm frequency and NAO) are short-term driving forces for variations in marsh accretion rate.