SEDIMENTARY STRUCTURES
1. INTRODUCTION
Study of sedimentary structures is important because they are far and away the
most valuable features for interpreting depositional environment. They're much more
useful than textural things like grain-size distribution and grain shape.
2. CLASSIFICATION
Two reasonable ways of classifying them are on the basis of: kind of
mechanism that produces them (physical sedimentary structures, chemical
sedimentary structures, and biogenic sedi-mentary structures) and time of
development relative to time of deposition (primary sedimentary structures
and secondary sedimentary structures).
Physical primary structures are certainly the most common and widespread
and striking, and most useful in interpretation. Most are related to
transportation and deposition of sediment particles at a fluid/sediment
interface. Such structures can be classified further on the basis of their
relationship to transportation (the movement of sediment past a point on a
sediment bed by currents) and deposition (the increase in bed elevation at a
point with time). Figure 3-2 is an unofficial classification of this kind.
3. STRATIFICATION
3.1 General
Stratification is by far the most important sedimentary structure.It is certainly
the single most useful aspect of sedimentary rocks in terms of interpreting
depositional conditions.
Stratification can be defined simply as layering brought about by deposition,
the term layering being more generally used for any arrangement of rocks in
bodies with approximately planar-tabular shape. Stratification comes about by
changes in depositional conditions with time.
TO PONDER:
What it was about depositional conditions that changed with time to give rise
to stratification?
What it is about the rock itself that makes the stratification manifest?
(Changes in composition, texture, or even other smaller-scale structures?)
Always think stratification in terms of changes in composition, texture,
and/or structure from bed to bed. Failing that, look for preferred orientation of
clasts, which often reveals the stratification. Here's a list of things that tend to
make stratification apparent to the eye:
1. Differences in grain size
2. Differences in composition
3. Color/shade differences caused by slight differences in composition
4. Differential weathering caused by differences in composition/texture;
these range from gross to subtle;
5. Zones of larger or smaller concentration of individual components, like
pebbles or fossils in otherwise homogeneous sediment;
6. Preferred orientation of nonspherical components (technically not stratifi-
cation itself, but it can reveal the stratification; often useful in unstratified
conglomerates)
3.2 Terminology
Stratification is officially subdivided into bedding and lamination, depending
upon the thickness of the strata, and bedding and lamination are in turn
subdivided according to thickness.
It is often hierarchical, in that beds commonly show internal lamination on a
much finer scale.
Remember: Lamination is a phenomenon and Lamina is an object.
3.3 Parting
Parting is the tendency for stratified rocks to split evenly along certain stratifi-
cation planes.
Parting is important because it depends not only upon the underlying
existence of weaker bedding planes but also upon the extent and nature of
weathering: A freshly blasted outcrop usually won't show any parting at all, but
if one goes back to the outcrop years or decades later, it might show well
developed parting.
3.4 Origin
Here are three major "scenarios" for the origin of stratification. These are
the broad ways loose sediments get deposited.
a) Quiet-fluid deposition of particles by settling: Ocean bottom (plus lakes)
mainly; low-velocity currents carrying a supply of suspended sediment from
upcurrent; usually fine-grained but not always; usually thin lamination, because
deposition rate is slow relative to the slight changes in settling regime; usually
nearly or perfectly even and planar, unless later deformed. Often such deposits
are later bioturbated to the point that none of the original lamination remains.
b) Deposition of particles by tractional currents: deposition onto a well
defined fluid-sediment interface during bed-load (or bed-load plus plus
suspended-load) transport by moderate to strong currents; stratification thick to
thin depending on nature of variations in sediment supply, currents, and
deposition rate; even stratification and cross stratification can both be important;
usually fairly coarse sediment, coarsest silt size into gravel range.
c) Mass deposition of coarse and fine sediment mixtures (or only fine
sediment, or rarely only coarse sediment) by sediment gravity flows (high-
concentration sediment-water mixtures flowing as a single fluid) coming to rest
without differentiation or particle-by-particle deposition; usually thick-bedded,
with little or no internal stratification.
4. CROSS STRATIFICATION
4.1 Introduction
Cross stratification is stratification that is locally at some angle to the overall
stratification as a consequence of changes in the geometry of the deposi-
tional surface during deposition.
The vertical scale of cross stratification varies from millimeters to sev-eral
meters, and the geometry is infinitely varied. Cross stratification comes about
by deposition upon a sediment surface that is locally at an angle to the overall
plane of the depositional surface; this usually but not always involves erosion
of the depositional surface as well, either prior to or concurrent with
deposition. Some terminology: small-scale cross stratification is on scales
of up to several centimeters, medium-scale cross stratification is on scales
from several centimeters to several decimeters, and large-scale cross
stratification is on scales from several decimeters to several meters.
Cross stratification varies enormously in geometry. So cross stratification is
probably the single most useful tool in interpreting the physical aspects of
loose-sediment depositional environments.
More commonly than not, cross-stratified deposits are arranged as packets or
sets of conformable laminae separated from adjacent sets by truncation
surfaces. A set (also called a laminaset) is a succession of two or more
conformable laminae separated from other sets (or beds without sets) by
surfaces of erosion, non-deposition, or abrupt change in lithology. Figure 3-5
shows three common examples.
[one's view of cross stratification]. Usually it's seen on a fracture surface,
weathered or unweathered, nearly normal to the overall stratification. Some
cross stratification is approximately isotropic with respect to direction in the
plane of overall stratification, but most is anisotropic. Sometimes, cross
stratification looks like on a plane within the cross-stratified bed parallel to
overall stratification.() Explaination of three examples.
Think cross stratification as the general term, and cross-bedding and cross-
lamination according to the thickness of the strata within the sets.
Often a given cross-stratified bed may represent not just one depositional
event but two or more separate depositional events, each one superimposed
on the the previous one. Such beds are said to be amalgamated. Sometimes
it's easy to recognize the individual depositional events within the
amalgamated bed; the stratification within each part of the bed can then be
studied separately. But sometimes it's difficult to determine whether or notthe
bed is amalgamated.
4.2 How Bed Forms Make Cross stratification
In general terms, the fundamental idea about bed-form-generated cross
stratification is easy to state (Figure 3-7): as bed forms of one kind or other
pass a given point on the bed, both the bed elevation and the local bed slope
change with time. Consider a short time interval during the history of decrease
and increase in bed elevation. After a temporary minimum in bed elevation is
reached, deposition of new laminae takes place for a period of time, until a
temporary maximum in bed elevation is reached. Then, as the bed elevation
decreases again, there's complete or partial erosion of the newly deposited
laminae and formation of a new truncation surface. After the next minimum in
bed elevation, another set of laminae is deposited.
Take as an example a train of downstream-moving ripples in unidirectional
flow. (The picture would be qualitatively very similar for dunes.) Each ripple
moves slowly downstream, generally changing in size and shape as it moves.
Sediment is stripped from the upstream (stoss) surface of each ripple and
deposited on the downstream (lee) surface. cut the train of ripples by a large
number of verti-cal sections parallel to the mean flow direction (Figure 3-8).
The trough of a ripple is best defined by the curve formed by connecting all of
the low points on these vertical sections where they cut the given trough
(Figure 3-9). This curve, which I'll unofficially call the low-point curve, is
generally sinuous in three dimensions. The low-point curve moves
downstream with the ripples, and it changes its shape as it moves, like a
writhing dragon, because trough depths and ripple speeds change with time.
The resultant direction of ripple movement is described by the angle of climb,
denoted by θ in Figure 3-12. The tangent of θ is equal to the average rate of
bed aggradation divided by the ripple speed.
As the ripples climb in space, as described above, their troughs climb with
them. So the erosion surface associated with the downstream movement of
the low-point curve in a given trough passes above the erosion surface that
was formed when the preceding trough passed by. The lowest parts of the
foresets deposited by the ripple that was located between those two troughs
are then pre-served rather than eroded entirely (Figure 3-13). This remnant
set is bounded both above and below by erosion surfaces.
Figure 3-14 shows cross stratification in an ideally regular deposit produced
by low-angle climb of a train of ripples. The heavy lines are erosion surfaces,
and the light lines are fore-set laminae. The profile of the ripple train as it
existed at a given time is shown also. The upper parts of each ripple in the
train, underneath the dashed part of the profile, were eliminated by later
erosion. In real cross-stratified deposits of this kind, the erosion surfaces are
irregularly sinuous because trough geometry changes with time, and the sets
tend to pinch out both upstream and downstream because the ripples exist for
only a finite distance of movement.
The larger the angle of climb, the greater the fraction of foresets preserved. If
the angle of climb of the ripples is greater than the slope angle of the stoss
side of the ripples, then laminae are preserved on the stoss sides as well as
on the lee sides, and the full profile of the ripple is preserved (Figure 3-15).
This happens when the rate of addition of new sediment to the bed is greater
than the rate at which sediment is transported from the stoss side to the lee
side of the ripple. The differences in geometry between Figure 3-14 and
Figure 3-15 seem great, but keep in mind that the differences in environmental
conditions are not large. The only difference is in the value of the angle of
climb.
The lamination produced when ripples move with a positive angle of climb is
called climbing-ripple cross stratification. Examples with angle of climb so
small that the contacts between sets are erosional (as in Figure 3-14) might
be called erosional-stoss climbing-ripple cross stratification, and examples
with angle of climb large enough for preservation of the full ripple profile (as in
Figure 3-15) might be called depositional-stoss climbing-ripple cross
stratification.
To recapitulate the important points in this section: cross stratification is
formed by the erosion and deposition associated with a train of bed forms as
the average bed elevation increases by net addition of sediment to some area
of the bed. The angle of climb of the ripples depends on the ratio of rate of
bed aggradation to speed of ripple movement. At high angles of climb, the
entire ripple profile is preserved, and there are no erosion surfaces in the
deposit. At low angles of climb, only the lower parts of foreset deposits are
preserved, and the individual sets are bounded by erosion surfaces. The
general nature of such stratification is common to moving bed forms of all
sizes, from small current ripples to extremely large subaqueous or eolian
dunes. Important differences in the details of stratification geometry arise from
differences in bed-form geometry and how it changes with time.
4.3 Important Kinds of Cross stratification
4.3.1 Introduction
Major kinds of cross stratification in the sedimentary record fall into (i)
unidirectional-flow cross stratification, on a small scale corresponding to
ripples and on a larger scale corresponding to dunes, and (ii) oscillatory-flow
cross stratification.
4.3.2 Small-Scale Cross stratification in Unidirectional Flow
Associated almost entirely with the downstream movement of current ripples.
The general features of the cross-stratification geometry depend on (i) the
geometry of the ripples themselves, as well as how that geometry changes
with time as the ripples move, and (ii) the angle of climb.
This is a reflection of either (i) locally stronger erosion by a passing ripple
trough or (ii) disappear-ance of a given ripple as it moved downstream, by
being overtaken or absorbed by another faster-moving ripple from upstream.
New sets also appear in the down-stream direction, reflecting the birth of a
new ripple in the train of ripples.
The key to understanding this cross-stratification geometry lies in the
geometry of ripple troughs. Fully developed current ripples have strongly
three-dimensional geometry, and an important element of that three-
dimensional geometry is the existence of locally much deeper hollows or
swales or depressions in ripple troughs, where the separated flow happens to
become concentrated (because of the details of the ripple geometry upstream)
and where scour or erosion is much stronger. As one of these swales moves
downstream, driven by the advancing ripple upstream, it carves a rounded
furrow or trench, oriented parallel to the flow, which is then filled with scoop-
shaped or spoon-shaped laminae which are the foreset deposits of the
upstream ripple. Eventually the resulting set of laminae is partly or mostly or
even entirely eroded by the passage of a locally deeper swale in some later
ripple trough. This accounts for both the geometry of the sets and their
irregular interleaving.
On the rare occasions when you're able to see a planar section through the
deposit parallel to the overall stratification, you see a geometry which looks
like Figure 3-17, which shows the truncated edges of sets of laminae that are
strongly concave downstream, separated laterally by truncation surfaces. This
has been called rib and furrow (not a very descriptive term). It's an excellent
paleocurrent indicator.
For intermediate angles of climb, the stratification geometry is intermediate
between the two end members presented above. As the angle of climb
increases, the density and extent of truncation surfaces bounding the sets
decreases, and the average set thickness increases.
For a given sand size, current ripples in equilibrium with the flow don't vary
greatly in either size or geometry with flow velocity, so unfortunately there's
little possibility of using the details of stratification geometry to say anything
precise about the flow strength.
4.3.3 Large-Scale Cross stratification in Unidirectional Flow
Associated with the downstream movement of dunes. Again the general
features of the cross-stratification geometry depend on the geometry of the
dunes and the angle of climb.
Remember that dunes formed at relatively low flow velocities have a
tendency to be two-dimensional: their crests and troughs are nearly
continuous and fairly straight, and the elevations of the crests and troughs are
nearly uniform in the direction transverse to flow. On the other hand, at
relatively high flow velocities the dunes are moderately to strongly three-
dimensional, in much the same way that ripples are three-dimensional. Three-
dimensional dunes produce cross stratification that's qualitatively similar in
geometry to the small-scale cross stratification produced by ripples.
Figure shows the dune-covered bed surface and sections perpendicular to the
overall plane of stratification and parallel and transverse to the flow direction.
Most of what I said about the analogous section in Figure 3-16 for cross
stratification produced by ripples at low angles of climb is applicable to Figure
3-19 as well. Set thickness ranges from less than 10 cm to as much as a few
meters.
Figure 3-20 is a corresponding block diagram of cross stratification produced
by almost perfectly two-dimensional dunes in unidirectional flows. The
stratification geometry is rather different from that in Figure 4-19: in flow-
parallel sections the sets extend somewhat farther and the set boundaries are
less sinuous, but the biggest difference is in flow-transverse sections, where
both the sets and the truncational set boundaries are much more extensive
and show much less upward concavity. This is because of the absence of
locally strong scour swales in the troughs of the dunes. There's a whole
spectrum of intermediate cases for which the cross-stratification geometry is
less regular than the extreme case shown in Figure 3-22 but not as irregular
as in Figure 3-19.
In both Figure 3-19 and Figure 3-20, the angle of climb of the dunes is very
small. Dunes sometimes climb at higher angles, but that's not nearly as
common as for ripples, because it's uncommon for fairly coarse sediment to
be settling abundantly out of suspension over large areas to build up the bed
rapidly. In the very few cases I've seen, the geometry of cross stratification is
very much like that shown in Figure 3-18.
Planar Stratification
In many well-sorted coarse siltstones and sandstones, the planar lamination is the
outcome of fallout with traction or of differential transport. It is because of its
commonly close association with ripple and dune stratification In what seems to be a
flow environment in which the flow strength is decreasing with time (from plane-bed
transport to ripples or dunes).
SOLE MARKS
Sole marks are geometrical features produced on a sediment bed by erosion by a
strong current (flute marks), or by mechanical disruption of the bed by large objects
carried by a strong current (tool marks).
Strong currents are known to produce erosional flutes with characteris-tic geometries
on semicohesive mud beds.
Sole marks are always seen in negative relief . This is because usually the strong
current that makes the marks later deposits a bed of sand (or even gravel). After
burial, lithification, uplift, and erosion, what remains for you to see, usually in
outcrops with steep dips, is the underside of the sandstone bed, the shale having
been weathered away. This looks like flute cast.
8. OTHER SEDIMENTARY STRUCTURES
• desiccation cracks: Also called, less precisely mud cracks, these are
tension cracks or fractures that extend downward from a bed top into the
sediment below. They are arranged in a network, which in some cases comprises
nearly regular hexagons or rectangles but more commonly are of irregular
geometry.
The significance of desiccation cracks is the evidence they give of subaerial
exposure of the sediment surface—that is, emergence of a previously
submerged depositional surface. They can also be a top-and-bottom indicator,
inasmuch as they commonly taper downward, are capped above by a later-
deposited bed, and are filled with that same later-deposited sediment (Figure
3-31). In some cases, when a thin bed is undergoes desiccation cracking, the
individual segments of the cracked bed curl upward, and the later-deposited
sediment insinuates itself beneath the up-curled edges (Figure 3-32).
• Raindrop impressions: When a soft, moist surface of freshly deposited
sediment is exposed to a brief, light shower of large raindrops, tiny craters,
circular in outline and with a slightly raised rim, are imprinted upon the
sediment surface.
• Graded bedding: If the particle size in a siliciclastic bed varies
systematically upward through the bed, the bed is said to be graded. If the
particle size decreases upward, the bed is said to be normally graded; if the
particle size increases upward, the bed is said to be reversely graded or
inversely graded.
To account for reverse grading, through kinetic sieve effect whereby
finer particles can find their way relatively easily downward among coarser
particles but coarser particles cannot find their way easily down among finer
particles.
A distinction can be made between two kinds of grading which is distribution
grading, whereby the entire frequency distribution of the sediment shifts
toward a finer or a coarser mean size, and coarse-tail grading, whereby the
frequency distribution of the main mass of the sediment stays about the same
but the percentage of sediment in the coarse tail of the distribution changes
significantly.
