Quantification of SEM microtextures useful in sedimentary environmental discrimination

Scanning electron microscopic imagery is often used to identify and discriminate among environments of sedimentation with the main aim of identifying individual microfeatures, or suites of microtextures, that are considered indicative of a particular depositional environment or geologic process. Because few microtextures are considered to represent a single geologic process it is necessary to analyze a large number of quartz sands and other mineralic grains with the objective of determining the frequency of occurrence of a range of microtextures within a distinct sample suite. Using percent frequency of occurrence of different microtextures from suites of fluvial, glaciofluvial and glacial sands from sites in Estonia and Latvia, we invoked statistical comparison of different sample suites using Euclidean distances. These provide a quantitative means of measuring the differences among different sediments and processes that formed them and also a quantification tool useful in assessing microtextures as a recorder of sedimentary environments.