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AAPG Bulletin

Abstract


Volume: 67 (1983)

Issue: 3. (March)

First Page: 518

Last Page: 518

Title: Intertidal Cementation: Some Geochemical, Mineralogical, and Petrographic Considerations: ABSTRACT

Author(s): Clyde H. Moore

Article Type: Meeting abstract

Abstract:

The chemistry, mineralogy, and petrography of intertidal cements are dependent on the chemical and physical characteristics of the waters from which they were precipitated--as well as on the biota this water supports. The study of Holocene cementation in Boiler Bay, St. Croix, Virgin Islands, is well suited to illustrate the basic constraints that the chemistry, mineralogy, and petrography of the cements place on any model of beach rock origin. Boiler Bay contains a well-developed beach rock pavement cemented on its western extremity by rhombohedral-bladed, circumgranular magnesian calcite cement, and on its eastern end by acicular, circumgranular aragonite cement. These facts indicate that, although the precipitational fluid was dominantly marine and cementation occurred under phreatic conditions, western beach rock cements were precipitated under a different geochemical regime than were those cements in the east. Pelleted magnesian calcite micrite cements that are characteristic of the seawardmost parts of the beach rock pavements (as well as submarine cements occurring in offshore reefs) were found by scanning electron microscopy to be biologic in origin. Backbeach cemented zones are characterized by low to high magnesian calcite, rhombohedral, equant-to-bladed circumgranular crust cements. This combination of cement mineralogy-petrography indicates fresh to marine, phreatic precipitational conditions in the backbeach area. Cement chemistry, particularly magnesian carbonate content in the calcites and strontium contents of aragonite and calcite, indica es that the beach rocks of western Boiler Bay were precipitated from mixed marine-fresh meteoric waters, and that the eastern Boiler Bay beach rocks were precipitated from normal marine waters with no freshwater influence. Backbeach cements of western Boiler Bay show a complete gradation of cement fabric, mineralogy, and chemistry that would indicate a classic fresh-marine water mixing zone. Hydrogeochemical studies of beach and near-beach interstitial waters confirm that western Boiler Bay is a locus of freshwater influx into the marine system. It would seem, then, that the mineralogy of Boiler Bay beach rock is controlled by fresh-marine water mixing.

Artificial substrate experiments, using the western Boiler Bay observation wells, pinpoint the locus of cementation in this area as being within the fresh-marine water mixing zone near the upper surface of the water table. In addition, these experiments indicate that cement growth can be independent of substrate mineralogy and that organic coatings on cement substrates may ultimately be one of the major controls over initial cementation patterns. Finally, the experimental approach in the intertidal environment may well enhance our understanding of controls over carbonate cementation.

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