Tailor–made geology 1: General introduction and Salthill Quarry, Lancashire

The protection and long-term safeguarding of geological localities are fundamental to the continuation of fieldwork, both now and in the future. The responsibility for these lies with the Nature Conservancy Council, the government agency charged with protecting geological and biological sites. Part of the work of the Council's Geology Branch is concerned with creating or re-exposing geological localities which are of value for teaching or collecting; and in the article which follows, Keith Duff explains the background and methods of this work, using the recently established geological trail at Salthill Quarry in Lancashire as as example. This is the first of a series of articles which will give details of British sites developed in this way.     

Sheet slides and rotational failures on a convergent margin: the Kidnappers Slide, New Zealand

The Kidnappers Slide, on the upper continental slope of the convergent margin off eastern North Island, New Zealand, has been re-examined using a grid of high-resolution seismic reflection profiles. The slide is not a single feature but a complex of sheet slides and rotational failures ranging from 20 to 140 m thick, and covering a total area of 720 km². Failures occurred in several phases, on slopes of 1–5°, in late Quaternary, muddy, shelf-edge clinoforms that have prograded into an accretionary, trench-slope basin. Piston cores and seismic stratigraphy show that the main failure probably occurred in early Holocene times but that movements ranged from mid last glacial to late Holocene times. The sheet slides exhibit tensional collapse via numerous listric normal faults that sole out on glide planes; there is no clear evidence of compressional structures anywhere within the complex. The glide planes occur at progressively deeper stratigraphic levels towards the northeastern end of the complex, and near the steep slope that defines the seaward edge of the trench-slope basin. There is retrogressive failure at the top of the slope. The surficial slides are being deformed by growth of active tectonic faults and folds associated with the convergent plate margin. This type of slope failure may be partially related to metastable sandy layers within the last glacial age progradational sequence, and possibly to formation of bubble phase gas at shallow depths. Failure was probably triggered by earthquake loading of sediments in this highly seismic region.     

The Turiy Massif, Kola Peninsula, Russia: Isotopic and Geochemical Evidence for Multi-source Evolution

The Turiy Massif, lying within the Kandalaksha Graben, and onthe southern coast of the Kola Peninsula, contains carbonatites,phoscorites, melilitolites, ijolites and pyroxenites withinone central and four surrounding satellite complexes. Sr–Ndisotopic data from the central complex phoscorites and carbonatites,and the nearby Terskii Coast kimberlites, combined with otherrecently published data on the Devonian Kola Alkaline Province,allow us to redefine the position of the Kola Carbonatite Line(KCL) of Kramm (European Journal of Mineralogy 5, 985–989,1993). We propose that the revised-KCL mantle sources includea lower-mantle plume, and a second enriched source, which alsocontributed to the Terskii Coast and Archangelsk kimberlites.The Turiy Massif silicate rocks and northern complex carbonatiteshave more enriched isotopic signatures than the distinct, anddepleted signatures of the central complex phoscorites and carbonatites,particularly with respect to     

Fluvial herring-bone cross-stratification in a modern tributary mouth bar, Coonamble, New South Wales, Australia

Herring-bone cross-stratification occurs in tributary mouth bar sediments less than 150 yr old in Warrena Creek near its confluence with the Castlereagh River some 2000 river kilometres from the sea in northern New South Wales. These streams have low gradients, with straight to anastomosing channels which become sinuous and distributive downstream. Channel beds are sand but banks are almost exclusively mud which is burrowed and extensively penetrated by roots. Herring-bone cross-stratification results from flow reversals in Warrena Creek during flood events. Flow direction depends upon discharge and stage in the creek relative to that in the adjacent river. The lithofacies resemble inter-tidal deposits and could easily be misidentified on the basis of herring-bone cross-stratification in an ancient sedimentary sequence. Herringbone cross-stratification should be regarded as diagnostic of depositional environments in which current directions are principally determined by reversals of water surface gradient, rather than by regional slope. Flow reversal phenomena may be a characteristic of very low gradient fluvial systems.     

Transport and accumulation of actinide elements in the near-shore environment: field and modelling studies

Nuclear facilities in coastal locations often discharge low‐level liquid wastes into the sea and the radioisotopes in these discharges are of interest both in assessing possible environmental impacts and as tracers for coastal processes. The distributions of a range of artificial radionuclides, derived from the authorized discharges from British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) Sellafield, have been determined in the sediments of an intertidal salt marsh in the Esk Estuary, Cumbria, UK. Where published discharge histories exist (for ¹³⁷Cs, ²³⁸Pu, ^239,240Pu and ²⁴¹Am), the sediment core‐profile distributions of these radionuclides have been compared with the releases from Sellafield, and consistent values of the accumulation rate (0·226 ± 0·007 g cm^?2 yr^?1) are obtained. A quantitative model has been developed, describing association of radionuclides with suspended particulate material, which is then accumulated and mixed in an offshore mud patch before resuspension and deposition in the salt marsh. The model has been used to describe radionuclide distributions observed in both the mud patch and the salt marsh, and to identify isotopes for which post‐depositional remobilization or solution transport from the discharge point are important. The behaviour of the commonly studied isotopes (¹³⁷Cs, ²³⁸Pu, ^239,240Pu and ²⁴¹Am) is similar to that observed at this and other nearby locations. The activation product isotope ²³⁶U is enhanced in these sediments over the natural baseline by four to eight orders of magnitude, and the results suggest that Sellafield‐derived uranium is comparably mobile to ¹³⁷Cs in these sediments although the processes governing the behaviour of these two elements may be different. In situ production of ²⁴¹Am by decay of its ²⁴¹Pu parent has generated only 17% of the current sediment inventory of this isotope, insufficient to account for the increase over the last 20–25 years, and suggesting that the input material for these sediments is preferentially enriched in Am relative to Pu during transport from the offshore mud patch. The discharge history of ²⁴⁴Cm, which is unknown, has also been reconstructed from the sediment profile and the model.