Depositional environment in Great Indian Desert using grain size parameters and its chemical characterization

Abstract

Grain size is a fundamental descriptive measure of sediment and sedimentary rock. A large part of information related to sedimentary particles transport and deposition can be obtained from grain size. Grain size parameters are useful for recognizing sedimentary environments such as dune, river, beach marine and others of continental shelf through graphical, moment and statistical methods. Bivariate plots between various statistical grain size parameters can be successfully used for distinction of such environments. The present study aims at grain size analysis of fifty sediment samples collected from Thar desert of India. The statistical grain size parameters were treated using different statistical tools such as factor and discriminatory analysis to decipher the depositional history of the sediments of the study region. The analysis suggests that the sediments mainly deposited in fluvial to beach environment along with aeolian deposition. The shape and composition of the sediments grains were also studied using energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopyscanning electron microscope (EDX-SEM) which suggested the dominance of fluvial environment in the deposition.