Grain-size characteristics and provenance of ice-proximal glacial marine sediments

Abstract

Abstract This paper addresses the issue of the characteristic grain-size spectra of glacial and glacial marine sediments, an important topic because of the increasing emphasis on the use of specific sand-size fractions as indicators of iceberg rafting. Different methods of IRD identification can lead to different palaeoclimatic interpretations. We use three methods of grain-size analyses, with examples from the Labrador Sea, East Greenland, North Iceland, and the Ross Sea, Antarctica. The first method illustrates the ‘real’ grain size of glacial marine sediments by an examination of X-radiographs by image analysis and the sizing of clasts larger than 2 mm. Typically, grain-size analyses only apply to the matrix fraction of the sediment (smaller than 2 mm), and ignore the larger size clasts. The mean grain size appears to be between 8 to 10 mm. The second method includes counting the number of clasts larger than 2 mm from X-radiographs, and counts of particles (106–1000 μm). These latter counts show that diamictons from the North Iceland shelf indicate a dominance of glacially abraded basaltic grains, but they also contain a small, consistent proportion of angular volcanic glass shards of various compositions. The third method is to examine grain-size spectra of surface samples from East Greenland and the Ross Sea region of Antarctica and compare these data with down-core data from neoglacial-age glacial marine sediments from Nansen Fjord, East Greenland, and with late glacial diamictons from the North Iceland shelf. These sediments have a mode in the silt fraction, but they frequently have secondary peaks in the coarse sand and fine sand/coarse silt areas, and a trough in the range of 100 to 500 μm (medium to coarse sand). Most of the sediment samples analysed in this study contain 20–50% in the below 1 μm grain size, which reinforces the importance of examining this fraction in provenance studies in glacial marine sediments.