Winds clay mineral transport

Weathered fragments of continental crust comprise the bulk of marine sediments. These particles are primarily detrital silicates, with clay minerals being the most abmidant mineral type. Clay minerals are transported into the ocean by river runoff, winds, and ice rafting. Some are authigenic, being produced on and in the seafloor as a consequence of volcanic activity, diagenesis and metagenesis. 

The abyssal clays are composed primarily of clay-sized clay minerals, quartz, and feldspar transported to the siuface ocean by aeolian transport. Since the winds that pick up these terrigenous particles travel in latitudinal bands (i.e., the Trades, Westerlies, and Polar Easterlies), the clays can be transported out over the ocean. When the winds weaken, the particles fell to the sea siufece and eventually settle to the seafloor. Since the particles are small, they can take thousands of years to reach the seafloor. A minor fraction of the abyssal clays are of riverine origin, carried seaward by geostrophic currents. Despite slow sedimentation rates (millimeters per thousand years), clay minerals, feldspar, and quartz are the dominant particles composing the surface sediments of the abyssal plains that lie below the CCD. Since a sediment must contain at least 70% by mass lithogenous particles to be classified as an abyssal clay, lithogenous particles can still be the major particle type in a biogenous ooze. 

The dominant clay mineral at high latitudes is chlorite. In addition to ice rafting, lithogenous materials are transported in the polar oceans by rivers and winds. Polar seas are also characterized by diatomaceous oozes due to the occurrence of upwelling supported by divergence at 60°N and 60°S. 

The total mineral content of peats is dependent primarily upon the extent to which the residues of the peat-forming plants are diluted with sand, silt, clay and calcium carbonate transported from surrounding areas. Where no such washed-in or wind-blown materials are present the minerals are largely limited to those originally assimilated by the plants from the soil or waters where they grew. 

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