Provenance of Pliocene clay deposits from the Iberian Atlantic Margin and compositional changes during recycling

Abstract

The XRD mineralogy and geochemistry of recycled fine-grained deposits from the West Iberia Atlantic Margin are used to establish sediment provenance and evaluate the features that most closely reflect the nature of the source areas and the transformations during the last depositional cycle. A set of Pliocene sediment samples is organized according to grain size distribution, geochemistry, and mineralogy, and their chemical composition is compared with the composition of possible source rocks. Most deposits located to the north of the Mondego River were derived from the uplifted Precambrian metapelites of the basin edge, while to the south of the Mondego River they result mainly from recycling of Cretaceous and Cenozoic clastic units, which, in turn, were derived from Precambrian–Paleozoic granitoids and metasedimentary rocks. This differentiation is supported by several element ratios and biplots involving La, Sm, Gd, Sc, Th, U, Y, Yb, and Zr. For the specific grain size range of the deposits studied, which are mainly made up of silt and clay particles, composition is not substantially affected by the grain size distribution of the sediment. Multi-element diagrams designed to discriminate the tectonic setting and the nature of source rocks are of little use in the interpretation of provenance but help to trace geochemical and mineralogical transformations during the last depositional cycles. Despite the evidence of element leaching during the Pliocene depositional cycle, the geochemical and mineralogical indicators of weathering intensities are largely determined by the nature of the previous cycle units.