Carbonate diagenesis

Matthew RK (1968) Carbonate diagenesis Equihbration of sedimentary mineralogy to the subaerial environement coral cap of Barbados, West Indies. J Sed Petrol 38 1110-1119 McCulloch MT, Esat T (2000) The coral record of last interglacial sea levels and sea surface temperatures. ChemGeol 169 107-129... 

Smith PE, Farquhar RM Hancock RG (1991) Direct radiometric age determination of carbonate diagenesis using U-Pb in secondary calcite. Earth Planet Sci Lett 105 474-491 Spalding RF, Mathews TD (1972) Submerged stalagmites from caves in the Bahamas Indicators of low sea level stand. Quat Res 2 470-472... 

In carbonate diagenesis V we deal usually with a combination of low supersaturation and absence of mechanical agitation. Homogeneous nucleation will certainly not occur. The important factors to be investigated are heterogeneous nucleation and rates of growth and dissolution of crystals. 

Over the last 30 years the study of the stable isotope composition of carbonates has been one of the more active areas of research in carbonate geochemistry. These studies have particular application to later discussion of carbonate diagenesis and historical geochemistry of carbonate rocks. Many of the same considerations involved in understanding elemental distribution coefficients apply to the fractionation of stable isotopes. Consequently, we have included a discussion of the chemical principals associated with isotope behavior in this chapter. Only a relatively brief summary of these basic chemical considerations will be presented here, because recent books and extensive reviews are available on this topic (e.g., Arthur et al., 1983 Hoefs, 1987). Also, our discussion will be restricted to carbon and oxygen isotopes, because these isotopes are by far the most important for the study of carbonate geochemistry. The principles, however, apply to other stable isotopes (e.g., sulfur). 

The chemistry of waters in which diagenetic reactions occur is of central importance in understanding massive carbonate diagenesis. Topics that have received the most attention are the influence of mixing waters of dissimilar chemistries and the ability of waters to transport the necessary masses of diagenetic reactants and products. 

One of the most important aspects of carbonate diagenesis is the net movement of carbonate minerals. This mass transfer can be accomplished on a small scale by diffusive transport or on a large scale by the flow of subsurface waters. It is the basic process by which secondary porosity is created and cementation occurs. In most cases, it involves carbonate mineral dissolution at one site and precipitation at another. While this can be simply accomplished where mineralogic transformations from a metastable phase to a more stable phase are involved, more complex mechanisms may be required within mineralogically homogeneous carbonate bodies. 

There is an extensive literature that exists concerning carbonate diagenesis in the vadose and phreatic meteoric environmental settings (see e.g., Bathurst, 1975, 1980 James and Choquette, 1984 and Moore, 1989 for reviews). Much of this work has dealt with the stabilization of aragonite and magnesian calcite to calcite in the present meteoric diagenetic realm associated with Pleistocene limestones. As... 

The rate at which metastable phases dissolve or are replaced is an important problem in carbonate diagenesis. Carbonate mineral assemblages persist metastably in environments where they should have altered to stable assemblages. The question is "what are the time scales of these alterations" They are certainly variable ranging from a few thousand to a few hundreds of millions of years. Even calcites in very old limestones show chemical and structural heterogeneities, indicating that the stabilization of these phases is not complete. Unfortunately, it is difficult, but not impossible, to apply directly the lessons learned about carbonate mineral dissolution and precipitation in the laboratory to natural environments. 

Under the modest temperature and pressure conditions characteristic of the environments in which meteoric diagenesis typically takes place, many of the most important reactions are slow. This has severely constrained the study of the chemical mechanisms and kinetics involved in such fundamental processes as the aragonite to calcite transformation and dolomite formation. Information on these processes obtained under conditions not typical of the meteoric realm (e.g., elevated temperatures) are of questionable applicability to "real world" carbonate diagenesis. 

Early carbonate diagenesis and cementation of reefs need to be quantitatively and mechanistically examined. 

Machel H.G. (1989) Relationships between sulfate reduction and oxidation of organic compounds to carbonate diagenesis, hydrocarbon accumulations, salt domes, and metal sulfide deposits. Carbonates and Evaporites 4,137-151. 

Moore C.H., Jr. (1989) Carbonate Diagenesis and Porosity. Developments in Sedimentology 46, Elsevier, Amsterdam, 338 pp. 

Pingitore N.E. (1978) The behavior of Zn2+ and Mn2+ during carbonate diagenesis Theory and applications. J. Sediment. Petrol. 48, 799-814. 

Tribble G.W., Sansone F.J. and Smith, S.V. (1990) Stoichiometric modeling of carbon diagenesis within a coral reef framework. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta, (submitted). 

Banner J. L. (1995) Application of the trace element and isotope geochemistry of strontium to studies of carbonate diagenesis. Sedimentology 42, 805-824. 

Gluyas J. G. (1984) Early carbonate diagenesis within Phanerozoic shales and sandstones of the NW European shelf. Clay Min. 19, 309-321. 

Milliken K. L. (1998) Carbonate diagenesis in non-marine foreland sandstones at the western edge of the Alleghanian overthrust belt, southern Appalachians. In Carbonate Cementation in Sandstones Distribution Patterns and Geochemical Evolution (ed. S. Morad). International Association of Sedimentologists, Oxford, vol. 26, pp. 87-105. 

Banner J. L. and Hanson G. N. (1990) Calculation of simultaneous isotopic and trace element variations during water-rock interaction with applications to carbonate diagenesis. Geochim. Cosmochim. Acta 54, 3123-3137. Banner J. L., Wasserburg G. J., Dobson P. F., Carpenter A. B., and Moore C. H. (1989) Isotopic and trace element... 

Ellis, P. M., 1986, Post-Miocene carbonate diagenesis of the lower Cretaceous Edwards Group in the Balcones fault zone area, South-Central Texas, in The Balcones Escarpment, Central Texas, P. L. Abbott and C. M. Woodruff Jr., eds.. Geological Society of America Annual Meeting, San Antonio, pp. 101-114. 

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