OH in detrital quartz grains as tool for provenance analysis: Case studies on various settings from Cambrian to Recent

Abstract

Detrital quartz grains from Paleozoic and Mesozoic sandstones from North Africa and central Europe, respectively, and from recent siliciclastic sediments of the Elbe River from Germany were analysed by IR spectroscopy with respect to their OH defect content. Sample sets were carefully chosen to cover different stratigraphic units from different localities and according to previous findings that indicate a significant change in the source region in the respective sedimentary system. The validity of the new method is compared to heavy mineral and zircon age spectra analysis from previous studies. Results reveal that the OH defect inventory in quartz shows in all investigated sedimentary successions significant internal variations from sample to sample and thus may be used as a tool to identify changes in the source region. The degree of changes observed with the new method does not necessarily reflect the magnitude in differences observed by other methods (such as heavy minerals and/or zircon age spectra), underlining the potential as complementary tool for provenance analysis. The new tool is also tested to estimate mixing proportions between the Variscan and the Scandinavian signal in the Elbe River, resulting in a surprisingly high contribution of the Nordic source.