Textural features of Holocene perennial saline lake deposits of the Taoudenni–Agorgott basin, northern Mali

Abstract

Abstract The Holocene salt lake deposits of the Taoudenni–Agorgott basin, northern Mali, mainly consist of sediments with a high glauberite (Na2Ca(SO4)2) content. The remainder of the deposits largely consists of salt beds with a bloedite (Na2Mg(SO4)2·4H2O), thenardite (Na2SO4) or halite (NaCl) composition. A petrographical study of the deposits demonstrates that they formed in a perennial lake that experienced a gradual decrease in water depth. Textural features of the glauberite-dominated deposits are found to be related to water depth, through the control that this factor exerts on the sensitivity of the lake to changes in water supply and to short-term variations in evaporation rates. In this way, layering — due to variations in glauberite content and crystal size — is inferred to be typical of deposits that formed in shallow water, whereas unstratified deposits are the product of high lake level stages. Halite textures are found to be indicative of the place within the water column where crystal growth occurred (along the lake bottom or higher), which is mainly determined by water depth and partly by evaporation rates. The oldest halite beds are largely unaltered cumulate deposits, whereas the youngest layers developed exclusively through bottom growth. The basal part of one thick halite bed at a level between these two groups of halite layers developed by an alternation of both types of growth, in response to variations in evaporation rates. Variations in mineralogical composition between and within the salt beds that formed during the earliest periods with a higher salinity, up to the first stage with halite formation, record a change in lake water chemistry with time but they are in one instance also determined by an early diagenetic mineral transformation.