Luminescence dating of Holocene spit deposits: An example from Skagen Odde, Denmark

Clemmensen, L. B. & Murray, A. S. 2009: Luminescence dating of Holocene spit deposits: An example from Skagen Odde, Denmark. Boreas , 10.1111/j.1502-3885.2009.00110.x. ISSN 0300-9483.
Skagen Odde is a large, active spit system in northern Denmark that started to form about 7200 years ago. Models for spit growth have usually relied on radiocarbon-dating of swale peat (Martørv). In this study, we date the spit deposits at three sites directly using Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) to obtain supplementary age control on spit development. The spit deposits consist of a lowermost succession of shoreface, beach and backshore aeolian deposits topped by a swale peat and followed by an uppermost succession of aeolian sand sheet and dune deposits. The ages of the shallow marine, beach and backshore aeolian deposits at the main study site are indistinguishable, implying good resetting of the shallow marine deposits; the average age of 4640±250 years compares well with earlier model predictions based on radiocarbon-dating of swale peat. Aeolian sand extracted from the uppermost part of the swale peat at this site provides OSL ages of between 1600 and 2500 years, in good agreement with a calibrated AMS age from the same level of 2330–2200 years. The uppermost aeolian succession consists of two units separated by a thin palaeosol, and the aeolian units have OSL ages of about 1500 years and younger than 130 years. Lowermost spit deposits at the two additional sites have average ages of 5010±240 and 3730±190, respectively, supporting the existing chronology for spit growth based on radiocarbon-dating.     

A remote-sensing technique for the identification of aeolian fetch distance

This paper describes a new method for assessing aeolian fetch distances in beach/dune systems. The remote‐sensing technique has advantages over currently used proxy measures of fetch distance, such as those based on tide gauges and beach profiles. The method uses a digital camera, global positioning system surveying, and a geographical information system software package to produce a rectified image of the beach surface. From this, direct measurements of the wet–dry beach boundary can be combined with wind direction measurements to determine fetch distance. The method offers an improvement on current approaches to sediment transport estimates: a 28‐day study on Magilligan Strand, Northern Ireland, showed that the commonly used high water mark approach overestimated fetch distance by 30% compared with the technique reported here.     

Coastal dune conservation on an Irish commonage: community-based management or tragedy of the commons?

In Ireland 'commonage' refers to lands jointly owned by several individuals who have grazing rights. Commonage can provide the low-intensity grazing regime regarded as optimal for habitat conservation, and it is also unlikely to suffer the negative impacts of building development or coastal engineering. Today, however, the traditional control systems of coastal commonage are generally moribund, leading to habitat degradation. The only viable future management model is likely to be one based on local community control. Community management would have the legitimacy to counter the negative perceptions of external authority that generate environmental degradation.     

Toward an Understanding of Biogenic-silica Dissolution in Seawater – An Initial Rate Approach Applied between 40 and 90 °C

Summary The kinetics of phytoplankton frustule dissolution has generally been studied as the appearance of silicic acid in a batch reactor. Unfortunately, this approach, though often illuminating, has not so far been successful because of the difficulty of parameterising the full reaction curve. This current study shows how the initial rate approach to chemical kinetics offers a way around this bottleneck, thereby allowing much chemical kinetics information about frustule dissolution to be collected. The technique is shown to be flexible and suited to short reaction times which facilitate detailed quantitative kinetics investigation, indeed, as would be expected in a solution phase, kinetics study. The technique is exemplified by a dissolution study of uncleaned frustules of Cyclotella crypticaat 40 °C and above. The frustules were found to yield the same dissolution rate after 5 weeks dark storage, at 4 °C. Meanwhile, log dissolution rate was found to vary linearly with pH, with gradient 0.38 ± 0.01 (r ²=0.990). Linearity was upheld even at pHs as high as 14. Finally, a robust Arrhenius plot was established between 40 and 90 °C yielding an activation energy for dissolution of 84 ± 3 kJ mol ⁻¹. Follow through with the Eyring equation yielded an activation enthalpy, ΔH ^‡, and an activation entropy, ΔS ^‡, of 81 and 85 J mol ⁻¹ K ⁻¹, respectively. The discussion brings salient aspects of existing knowledge about diatom frustule dissolution kinetics into the wider context of silicate mineral dissolution.     

SNOWSHED CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE NOOKSACK RIVER WATERSHED,NORTH CASCADES RANGE,WASHINGTON*

ABSTRACT. Meltwater contributes to watershed hydrology by increasing summer discharge, delaying the peak spring runoff, and decreasing variability in runoff. High‐elevation snowshed meltwater, including glacier‐derived input, provides an estimated 26.9 percent of summer streamflow (ranging annually from 16 to 40 percent) in the Nooksack River Basin above the town of Deming, Washington, in the North Cascades Range. The Nooksack is a major spawning river for salmon and once was important for commercial, recreational, and tribal fishing, and in the past its flow met the demands of both human and aquatic ecosystems. But the river is already legally overallocated, and demand is rising in response to the rapidly growing human population. Variability in snowshed contributions to the watershed is considerable but has increased from an average of 25.2 percent in the 1940s to an average of 30.8 percent in the 1990s. Overall stream discharge shows no significant increase, suggesting that the glaciers are melting, and/or precipitation levels (or other hydrologic factors) are decreasing at about the same rate. If glaciers continue to recede, they may disappear permanently from the Cascades. If that occurs, their summer contribution to surface‐water supplies will cease, and water‐management policies will need drastic revision.     

The hydrodynamics of particle clusters and sediment entrapment in coarse alluvial channels

ABSTRACT Particles projecting from the bed of an alluvial channel distort the fluid stream to produce a distinctive pressure field. This has considerable significance for both the entrapment and entrainment of other particles and is a primary cause of the widespread occurrence of pebble clusters and boulder shadows. Lift and drag forces are determined on clustered hemispherical particles of varying size. In the wake of an obstructing particle both forces are shown to vary directly with particle separation in a linear fashion. On the stoss side of the cluster, drag is uniform regardless of the separation of the component particles, but lift is shown to increase when particle separation is small, so affecting stability. This mutual interference of neighbouring clustered bed particles is a vital consideration of incipient motion and is shown by field evidence to cause a wide range in transport stage for particles of similar size and shape. On average, 46% of clustered particles are entrained by flood flow compared to 87% of particles in open plane-beds. The influence of clusters is a major determinant of sedimentary sorting.     

A scale of dissolution for quartz and its implications for diagenetic processes in sandstones

During diagenesis quartz grains undergo selective dissolution, controlled in location by the surface energy characteristics of the individual grains. Experimental etching in HF of isolated quartz grains reproduces comparable textures to those of natural occurrences. Some experimental results illustrate the specific effects of surface textures on their initial dissolution rates, so demonstrating the control surface energy variation has over dissolution. A hierarchy of grain surface characteristics, according to surface energies, provides a useful guide to the relative rates of dissolution during decomposition.     

A new approach to provenance studies: electron microprobe analysis of detrital garnets from Middle Jurassic sandstones of the northern North Sea

Reading provenance from heavy-mineral suites is hampered by the depletion of diagnostic, but unstable, heavy minerals through intrastratal solution, a common phenomenon in deep sedimentary basins such as the North Sea. This paper demonstrates the potential of electron microprobe analysis in overcoming this problem, by concentrating on the compositional variations shown by detrital garnets, which are relatively resistant to intrastratal solution. Studies of the garnets from the Brent Group (Middle Jurassic) of the Murchison and Tern oilfields in the northern North Sea reveal that three distinct areas supplied detritus. Association 1 which characterizes the Broom Formation in both areas and recurs higher in the sequence in the Tern field, is ascribed to an Orkney-Shetland source. The location of the areas supplying the garnets of Association 2, best represented in Murchison, and Association 3, common to both fields, is less clear. Their ultimate sources clearly include high-grade metamorphics, and therefore probably lie on the Norwegian landmass, the Orkney-Shetland Platform, or, conceivably, the Scottish landmass, but the possibility of recycling makes it difficult to judge their immediate provenances. Nevertheless, the presence of three garnet associations indicates that the most widely accepted model of Brent sedimentation, with sands derived from a domal uplift in the outer Moray Firth and channelled northward along the Viking Graben, is untenable.     

Structure, chemistry and origins of gypsum crusts in southern Tunisia and the central Namib Desert

Gypsum crusts are broadly defined as accumulations at or within about 10 m of the land surface from 0.10m to 5.0 m thick containing more than 15% by weight gypsum (CaSO₄·2H₂O) and at least 5.0% by weight more gypsum than the underlying bedrock. The deposits are often, but not invariably, consolidated owing to cementation by gypsum. The crusts are found in many of the world's deserts where mean monthly potential evaporation exceeds mean monthly precipitation throughout the year. Using structural, fabric and textural criteria, three main types of crust may be distinguished:(1) bedded crusts, found either at or beneath the land surface, which are made up of discrete horizontal strata up to 0.10 m thick, each showing a gradation in gypsum crystal size from less than 50 μm at the top to more than 0.50 mm at the base; (2) subsurface crusts, of which there are two forms, one made up of large, lenticular crystals (up to 0.50 m in diameter)—the desert rose crusts—and the other, a mesocrystalline form, with gypsum crystals up to about 1.0 mm in diameter; and (3) surface crusts, which are subdivided into columnar, powdery and cobble forms, all of which are made up of predominantly alabastrine gypsum (crystallites less than 50 μm in diameter). In southern Tunisia and the central Namib Desert, bedded crusts are found around ephemeral lakes and lagoons. They are characterized by size-graded beds, gypsum contents of 50–80% by weight and comparatively high concentrations of sodium, potassium, magnesium and iron. They are interpreted as shallow-water evaporites which accumulate when saline pools evaporate to dryness. Desert rose crusts or croûtes de nappe generally contain 50–70% by weight gypsum, and have higher sodium concentrations than the second subsurface form. Texturally they are characterized by poikilitic inclusion of clastic material within large lenticular crystals. They are interpreted as hydromorphic accretions, which precipitate in host sediments at near-surface water tables through the evaporation of groundwater. The second form of subsurface crust—the mesocrystalline—often occurs in close association with the various surface forms. Unlike the hydromorphic crusts, they are not restricted to low-lying terrain. They are characterized by gypsum contents reaching 90% by weight, and have a close chemical and textural similarity to columnar surface crusts. This mesocrystalline form represents an illuvial accumulation; the surface forms—excluding the bedded crusts—are exhumed examples at various stages of solutional degradation. Subsurface precipitation of gypsum from meteoric waters containing salts leached from the surface, results in displacive gypsum accumulation in the soil zone. In southern Tunisia, the gypsum is derived from sand and dust deflated from evaporitic basins; in the central Namib, salts dissolved in fog water are the most likely source. Where other salts are present, differential leaching may form two-tiered crusts, calcrete—gypsum or gypsum—halite, if rainfall is sufficient to mobilize the less soluble salt yet insufficient to flush the more soluble. Gypsum crust genesis is restricted to arid environments, and if their susceptibility to post-depositional alteration is acknowledged, they can provide valuable palaeoclimatic indicators.     

Thin section and S.E.M. textural criteria for the recognition of cement-dissolution porosity in sandstones

Cement-porosity relationships are described from the Lower Triassic Sherwood Sandstone Group and the Middle Jurassic Ravenscar Group in the United Kingdom. Calcite cemented sandstones display a variety of replacement textures, with preferential replacement of grains and of overgrowth faces with high free-surface energy. Dolomite and siderite cemented sandstones display similar textures but replacement is less specific and euhedral overgrowth surfaces are commonly embayed by carbonates. Examination of the more porous sandstones with the scanning electron microscope reveals a range of pitting and embayment textures in authigenic overgrowths and in detrital grains. These range from small ‘v’-shaped notches and pits, through regular and irregular shaped embayments, into large depressions. These textures appear to be morphologically similar to the quartz surfaces seen in thin sections of carbonate cemented sandstones, and are interpreted to have been formed by the dissolution of pore-filling and grain replacive authigenic carbonates. This is confirmed by examination of experimentally exhumed overgrowth surfaces from carbonate cemented sandstones. These textures indicate that part of the intergranular porosity in these sediments is secondary in origin, and has been generated by the dissolution of carbonate cements. The identification of such textures may lead to a more confident interpretation of the nature of intergranular porosity in the subsurface.