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Particle shape-controlled sorting and transport behaviour of mixed siliciclastic/bioclastic sediments in a mesotidal lagoon, South Africa

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Abstract

This study investigates the effect of particle shape on the transport and deposition of mixed siliciclastic-bioclastic sediments in the lower mesotidal Langebaan Lagoon along the South Atlantic coast of South Africa. As the two sediment components have undergone mutual sorting for the last 7 ka, they can be expected to have reached a highest possible degree of hydraulic equivalence. A comparison of sieve and settling tube data shows that, with progressive coarsening of the size fractions, the mean diameters of individual sediment components increasingly depart from the spherical quartz standard, the experimental data demonstrating the hydraulic incompatibility of the sieve data. Overall, the spatial distribution patterns of textural parameters (mean settling diameter, sorting and skewness) of the siliciclastic and bioclastic sediment components are very similar. Bivariate plots between them reveal linear trends when averaged over small intervals. A systematic deviation is observed in sorting, the trend ranging from uniformity at poorer sorting levels to a progressively increasing lag of the bioclastic component relative to the siliciclastic one as overall sorting improves. The deviation amounts to 0.8 relative sorting units at the optimal sorting level. The small textural differences between the two components are considered to reflect the influence of particle shape, which prevents the bioclastic fraction from achieving complete textural equivalence with the siliciclastic one. This is also reflected in the inferred transport behaviour of the two shape components, the bioclastic fraction moving closer to the bed than the siliciclastic one because of the higher drag experienced by low shape factor particles. As a consequence, the bed-phase development of bioclastic sediments departs significantly from that of siliciclastic sediments. Systematic flume experiments, however, are currently still lacking.

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Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank the former Department of Geology, University of Cape Town, and the former National Research Institute for Oceanology (CSIR), Stellenbosch, South Africa, for funding, work space and laboratory facilities. Several colleagues and technicians provided generous assistance on numerous occasions. Dr. Gordon Moir (at the time stationed at the University of California) is thanked for kindly supplying the computer program for the conversion of settling velocities into equivalent settling diameters, Drs. Andy Duncan and David Reid of the former Department of Geochemistry, University of Cape Town, for their help in debugging and adapting the program to the local hardware, and Nicol Mahnken, Technical Assistant at the Marine Research Department of Senckenberg in Wilhelmshaven, Germany, for generating the SEM images. The article benefitted from constructive assessments by M. Durafour and an anonymous reviewer.

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  1. Senckenberg Institute, Suedstrand 40, 26382, Wilhelmshaven, Germany

    Burghard W. Flemming

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Flemming, B.W. Particle shape-controlled sorting and transport behaviour of mixed siliciclastic/bioclastic sediments in a mesotidal lagoon, South Africa. Geo-Mar Lett 37, 397–410 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00367-016-0457-3

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