Sedimentary provenance studies

The study of sedimentary provenance interfaces several of the mainstream geological disciplines (mineralogy, geochemistry, geochronology, sedimentology, igneous and metamorphic petrology). Its remit includes the location and nature of sediment source areas, the pathways by which sediment is transferred from source to basin of deposition, and the factors that influence the composition of sedimentary rocks (e.g. relief, climate, tectonic setting). Materials subject to study are as diverse as recent muds in the Mississipi River basin (Potter et al. 1975), Archaean shales (McLennan et al. 1983), and soils on the Moon (Basu et al. 1988). A range of increasingly sophisticated techniques is now available to workers concerned with sediment provenance. Provenance data can play a critical role in assessing palaeogeographic reconstructions, in constraining lateral displacements in orogens, in characterizing crust which is no longer exposed, in testing tectonic models for uplift at fault block or orogen scale, in mapping depositional systems, in sub-surface correlation and in predicting reservoir quality. On a global scale, the provenance of fine-grained sediments have been used to monitor crustal evolution.