Much appreciation goes to the NSF MARGINS Source-to-Sink program and the crew of the R/V Melville PANASH cruise (2004) for the funding and acquisition of cores and select data used in this study, as well as the University of Georgia Center for Applied Isotope Studies for the 14 C dating of the foraminifera used in this project. Another thank you goes to Dr. Achim iv Herrmann for allowing me to use his microscope for picking foraminifera, and many thanks go to Brandon Thibodeaux for helping me

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... t-sieve samples and pick foraminifera. And, last but not least, I would like to extend much gratitude to Nicholas Whitcomb for help with thesis editing, as well as an immeasurable amount of advice and moral support over the past two years. With that, I extend thank-you's to my family and my friends, Ben Maas, Jill Bambrick Banks, Crawford White, Laura Sorey, Sterling Pempe, and Race Higgins for additional moral support throughout my years at LSU. v PREFACE This thesis is presented in -Journal‖ format. The primary article, Chapter 2, resultant of this research, is in preparation for submission to Marine Geology with the title, -A clay mineral provenance study of the northern Pandora Trough continental margin, Gulf of Papua.‖ Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the project topic and study area, and Chapter 3 includes additional project synthesis and future work. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .