Environmental conditions controlling cold-water coral growth in the southern Alboran Sea since the last deglaciation Selvaggi, Mar de la Fuente, María Pérez Asensio, José Noel Lo Iacono, Claudio Català, Albert Trias-Navarro, Sergio Corbera, Guillem Campderrós, Sara Haghipour, Negar Di Bella, Letizia Van Rooij, David Cacho, Isabel Cold-water corals Mediterranean thermohaline circulation Alboran Sea circulation This research was funded by ERC-Consolidator grant TIMED (Contract Agreement 683237), TRANSMOW project (PID2019-105523RB-I00) and MORIA project (PID2022-138010OB-I00) from the Agencia Estatal de Investigación (Spain). Members of the research group of Marine Geosciences from the Universitat de Barcelona thank the Generalitat de Catalunya for the 2021 SGR 01195 grant and IC for the ICREA-Academia Award. We thank the Universitat de Barcelona (Facultat de Ciències de la Terra, Departament de Dinàmica de la Terra I de l'Oceà), and the Sapienza Università di Roma (Department of Earth Sciences), which supported the research with the Doctoral School “Vito Volterra” Grant. We are grateful for the ship time provided by IPEV on the Marion Dufresne within the EuroFLEETS GATEWAY project (Grant Agreement 228344). We also acknowledge Montse Guart (Dept. Dinàmica de la Terra i de l'Oceà, Universitat de Barcelona) and Joaquín Perona (Centres Cíentifics i Tecnològics, Universitat de Barcelona) for their support with the laboratory work. J. N. Pérez-Asensio thanks the support of Research Group RNM-190 from Junta de Andalucía. Cold-water coral (CWC) mounds are commonly found in the Alboran Sea (westernmost Mediterranean), specifically in the so-called East and West Melilla mound provinces. This study presents a multi-proxy analysis on the environmental changes that occurred in west Melilla since the last deglaciation (~14 kyr), based on the onmound core MD13–3451 (~370 m). The analyses performed include geochemical measurements of foraminiferal coatings (U/Mn) and skeletal calcite (stable oxygen and carbon isotopes, Mg/Ca-derived deep-water temperatures). Furthermore, the seawater δ18O (δ18Osw) and the ice-volume-corrected seawater δ18O (δ18Osw-ivc) have been estimated via paired analyses of Mg/Ca and δ18Ocarbonate. Our findings suggest that i) pulses of relatively warm deep-water during the last mound flourishing stage, here-referred to as ‘Cold Water Coral - Growth Phase 1’ (CWC-GP1; ~11–9 kyr), triggered a shift in coral species dominance in the west Melilla province, and ii) a rapid freshening of the waters occurred during CWC-GP1, indicating significant hydrographical changes. To further interpret these results, we combined them with comparable records from neighboring sites. We find that CWC-GP1 is closely coupled with a reorganization of the Alboran Sea water column. More precisely, we discuss the potential emergence of a western Mediterranean intermediate sourced water, which partly replaced intermediate waters from eastern Mediterranean sources and contributed to the enhanced hydrodynamics of the region. We further propose that the interplay between strong near-bottom currents and increased upwelling conditions may have played a crucial role in controlling CWC growth dynamics. 2026-01-16T08:25:08Z 2026-01-16T08:25:08Z 2025-03-19 journal article Selvaggi, M.; De La Fuente, M.; Pérez Asensio, J.N. [et al.]. (2025). Environmental conditions controlling cold-water coral growth in the southern Alboran Sea since the last deglaciation. Global and Planetary Change Volume 249, June 2025, 104792. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloplacha.2025.104792 0921-8181 1872-6364 https://hdl.handle.net/10481/109777 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2025.104792 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ open access Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional Elsevier