Abstract: Based on the previously available data base for the surface soft sediments in the central and western South Yellow Sea, the authors focused on the combination characteristics and distribution rules of detrital minerals, content characteristics and distribution rules of CaCO₃,TiO₂,Cu,Sr and Ba in order to indicate sources of the sediments. Meanwhile, the characteristics are compared with the adjacent sediments of Yellow River, Yangtze River and some loess respectively. Results on material resources show that in the northwestern South Yellow Sea, sediments are mainly from the Yellow River and minorly from basement erosion at Shangdong peninsula and adjacent sea, sediments of the Yellow River delta in northern Jiangsu mainly came from the re-transportation of sediments of the old Yellow River and partly the erosion of base rocks by seawater in transgression period in Holocene. The central area had diversity of sediment sources, including sediments derived from former sediments and base rocks which were re-transpoted and re-deposited, also including some material that were carried by the Yangtze River, Kuroshio and old Yellow River. In the southern part of the studied area, sediments mainly come from the Yangtze River. The results indicate that the depositional area influenced by the modern Yellow River is second to those of the Yangtze River, and the paleo-channel of Yellow River is different from the present one, i.e. it ended at and flew into the Yellow Sea at Northern Jiangsu in late Pleistocene.

Key words: the South Yellow Sea, detrital minerals, geochemistry, provenance