Home – Home – Jornals – Geography and Natural Resources 2023 number 1

We examine the patterns of formation and distribution of therapeutic marine sulphide-silt muds and the prospects for increasing their resources on the sea coast of the Far East of the Russian Federation. Accumulations of this type of therapeutic mud are known on the coast of the Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk in the areas of development of accumulative and abrasion-accumulative shores. It is shown that muds are similar in composition and medicinal properties, and their waters are chloride sodium-magnesium, with salinity ranging from brackish to 42 g/dm³. Geologically, these accumulations are confined to sedimentary basins, promising for oil, gas, methane-bearing coals, mostly flooded by the sea. In the contact zone of their subaerial and submarine areas at the bottom of lagoons and bays, centers of discharge of groundwater and hydrocarbon gases are formed, which participate in the sulfate reduction reaction with the sulfate of sea waters. The fact of the leading role of this process in the formation of modern therapeutic muds is confirmed by material obtained in areas of widespread sulfide peloids at the bottom of the Black Sea. It can be assumed that subaerial areas, possibly the oil and gas bearing East Siberian, Chukchi, Anadyr and other sedimentary basins, are promising in relation to the discovery of new accumulations of therapeutic sulfide-silt muds. In carrying out oil and gas prospecting in the waters of the poorly studied northern seas, sulfide silts should be considered an indicator of the oil and gas potential of submarine sedimentary basins.