Syn-depositional continental rifting of the Southeastern Neo-Tethys margin during the Albian–Cenomanian: evidence from stratigraphic correlation

ABSTRACT

Albian–Cenomanian successions (Kazhdumi and Sarvak formations) represent remarkable variations in thickness, facies, fauna, and environments throughout the Zagros area. In the Coastal Fars (Charmu section), sedimentological and paleontological data evidence an intrashelf, with depths of 10s–100s m, surrounded by a shallow carbonate platform. Due to its depth, deposition of sequences in this setting has been controlled by eustatic sea-level changes rather than eurybathic changes, and several condensation episodes occurred related to marine transgressions. These observations are different from those in the adjacent sections in the Coastal Fars which recorded subaerial exposures instead. Combined with previous studies, this study denotes several intrashelf basins enclosed by a shallow carbonate platform on the southeastern margin of the Neo-Tethys during the Albian–Cenomanian. Development of intrashelf basins corresponds to basement faults in the Fars Salient. Likely, an extensional tectonic regime associated with a rifting event created horst–graben architecture by exerting extension along the basement faults and reactivating salt structures. Deposition on these troughs and highs led to the facies and thickness variations of the concomitant sequences. Development of several intrashelf basins on the southeastern margin of the Neo-Tethys indicates that syn-depositional continental rifting event could occur during the Albian–Cenomanian, prior to the tectonic inversion around the earliest Turonian.     

Utilization of ASTER Data and Spectral Analysis to Discriminate Hydrothermally Altered Areas over Rabor,South of Kerman,Iran

This study attempts to evaluate the capability of the advanced spaceborne thermal emission and reflection radiometer (ASTER) and the advantages of ground knowledge for generating maps portraying hydrothermally altered areas in relation to porphyry copper deposits. The northern part of the Rabor area in the Urumieh–Dokhtar magmatic belt, containing some copper mineralization occurrences, was investigated as a case study. Several image processing techniques, namely minimum noise fraction, pixel purity index, and n-dimensional visualization, contributed to the extraction of pure pixels as endmembers. The spectra of some rock samples collected around the well-known altered zones of the study area were resampled to ASTER bands and used to identify the image-extracted endmembers. Spectral analysis of the endmembers and ground sample spectra led to the identification of three types of hydrothermal alterations: (1) phyllic, (2) propylitic, and (3) argillic. The identified endmembers were used as the specified targets for mapping hydrothermal alteration zones over the study area by using a mixture tuned match filtering algorithm. Results demonstrate that high abundances within pixels correspond closely to the altered areas. Field observations, thin section, and X-ray diffraction of collected samples confirmed the accuracy of the alteration maps prepared by the application of the proposed methods. The final classified hydrothermal alteration maps showed the overall accuracy and kappa coefficient values of 85.41 and 0.72%, respectively. These results ascertain that ASTER data that use suitable image processing techniques appear consistent in mapping out the distribution of hydrothermally altered areas. In addition, ground knowledge data can act as a valuable information source to increase the image classification accuracy and reliability.     

Effects of plastic fines on the instability of sand

The effects of plastic fines on the instability of sand were studied in this article. For this purpose, the results of undrained monotonic triaxial compression tests conducted on specimens of sand with variation in fines content from 0% to 30% are presented. The specimens were prepared in two different initial dry unit densities and were subjected to two different confining pressures. The results of the tests are shown in four groups. They demonstrate that an increase in plastic fines leads to an increase in the instability, followed by a decrease with a further increase in fines content. It is also seen that the slope of the steady-state lines in p’-q space increases with increase in fines content, but after certain fines content, it begins to decrease. A reverse trend is observed for the slope of instability lines; it decreases at lower fines content, followed by an increase with a further increase in fines content.     

Effect of Fines Type and Content of Sand on Correlation Between Shear Wave Velocity and Liquefaction Resistance

The use of shear wave velocity (V _s) measurements as an in situ test for evaluation of liquefaction potential has increased substantially due to its advantages. Relatively large numbers of studies have been performed to establish the correlation between V _s and liquefaction resistance (CRR) of clean sands. Usually, natural sands contain silt and/or clay, and previous studies have shown that both the amount of fines and their nature influence the values of CRR as well as V _s. Therefore, the CRR–V _s correlations may also be affected by fines content and type of sandy soils. However, effect of fines content and especially fines type of sandy soils on the correlation between V _s and CRR is inadequately addressed in the literature. In this study, cyclic triaxial and bender element tests were conducted on samples of sand containing various amounts of different types of fines, and the effects of fines on the values of CRR and V _s are investigated. The results show that G ₀ and CRR reduce even when small amounts of fines are added to sand. Therefore, use of plasticity index (PI) of the fines fraction is better than the PI of the overall soil when trying to assess the effects of fines. Using obtained experimental data as well as the established semiempirical CRR–V _s relationship, the CRR–V _s correlation was developed for all the tested soils, and the effect of fines type on the correlation is also examined. Based on the results obtained in this study, CRR–V _s correlation is affected by both the amount and the plasticity of the fines present in the sand, and this correlation is soil specific.     

Fe and Al oxides distribution in some ultisols and inceptisols of southeastern Nigeria in relation to soil total phosphorus

Ten highly weathered soils in southeastern Nigeria were sampled from their typical A and B horizons for analyses. The objectives were to determine the different forms of Fe and Al oxides in the soils and relating their occurrence to phosphate availability and retention in the soils. The soils are deep and often physically degraded but are well drained and coarse in the particle size distribution. They are mostly dominated by kaolinite in their mineralogy with very high values of SiO₂. The soils are acidic with low soil organic carbon (SOC) contents. The elements in the exchange complex are also low thus reflecting in the low CEC of the soil. Available phosphorus (P) in the soils are generally low while total P ranged from 157 to 982 mg kg⁻¹ with an overall average of 422 mg kg⁻¹. Total Fe in the soil is highest and their order represented as follows: Fe_t > Fe_d > Fe_ox ≥ Fe_p. The pyrophosphate extractable Fe was always higher in the top soil than in the subsoil and was attributed to the fact that these forms of Fe are associated with organic matter which is more abundant in topsoil than in subsoil. Like in Fe forms, the order of Al occurrence could generally be presented as; Al_t > Al_d > Al_ox > Al_p. More Fe and Al oxides in the soils are strongly crystalline while a small quantity is poorly crystalline Fe forms. The amorphous forms of both Fe and Al are very low in the soils when compared with the crystalline forms. The oxides that show very strong affinity to total P are Fe_d–Fe_ox, Fe_d, Al_d, Fe_t, Fe_ox and Al_ox/Al_d. To overcome this problem of P retention in the soil, we recommend constant liming of these soils to neutralize them, application of organic matter and of high dosage of phosphate fertilizer to the soils.     

Numerical behaviour of the downward continuation of gravity anomalies

The numerical results of downward continuation (DWC) of point and mean gravity anomalies by the Poisson integral using point, single mean, and doubly averaged kernel are examined. Correct evaluation of the integral in its innermost zone is a challenging task. To avoid instabilities, an analytical planar approximation is used in the innermost integration zone. In addition it is shown that the single mean mode has the minimum discretization error. Downward continuation of point and mean anomalies by singly and doubly averaged kernel are the same mean anomalies on the geoid.