Dear Mr. Yadav:

The major difference between these two siliciclastic sediments is the compositional maturity and the matrix content. Arenites may be subdivided into quartz arenites (high maturity) and into lithic and feldspar arenites, respectively, both of which are rather immature. “Rock flour” or very fine-grained particles (no cement!) of less than 30 µm in size between the larger clasts are denominated as matrix. When the matrix increases to ³ 15 % it is no longer called an arenite but a greywacke. For example a lithic arenite with rock fragments exceeding 50 % is called a lithic greywacke in case of a matrix of more than 15 %. Greywackes occur in environments where the deposition is very swift such as in submarine turbidities but also found in areas affected by strong magmatic activity with volcanic edifices. Synorogenic sedimentation (flysch) in ancient and modern fold belts often are rife with these matrix-enriched greywackes.

With kind regards

H.G.Dill

Well,

Greywackes consist of a sand-size framework component floating in a finer-grained pasty matrix of grains finer than 0.03 millimeter whose overall abundance exceeds 15 percent by volume. Arenites consist of a sand-size framework component surrounded by pore spaces that are either empty or filled with crystalline chemical cement. Further subdivision of both arenites and greywackes into three specific sandstone families is based on the relative proportions of three major framework grain types: quartz (Q), feldspar (F), and rock fragments. Greywacke formation is attributed to submarine avalanches or strong turbidity currents. These actions churn sediment and cause mixed-sediment slurries, in which the resulting deposits may exhibit a variety of sedimentary features. Supporting the turbidity current origin theory is that deposits of greywacke are found on the edges of the continental shelves, at the bottoms of oceanic trenches, and at the bases of mountain formational areas. They also occur in association with black shales of deep sea origin. The two primary sedimentary depositional environments that produce quartz arenites are beaches/upper shore face and aeolian processes, due to their high residence time, high transport distance, and/or high energy of the environment. Most of the time, these sediments are reworked over and over, even being eroded out of a lithified rock and becoming a brand new sediment and rock. This is known as a multicycle sandstone.

Best regards

Dear Pawan Yadav,

I do hope that the followings may be useful for you....

With kind regards,

A.V. Golynsky

There are many different systems of classifying sandstones, but the most commonly used schemes incorporate both texture (the presence and amount of either interstitial matrix—i.e., clasts with diameters finer than 0.03 millimetre—or chemical cement) and mineralogy (the relative amount of quartz and the relative abundance of rock fragments to feldspar grains). The system presented here (Figure 4) is that of the American petrologist Robert H. Dott (1964), which is based on the concepts of P.D. Krynine and F.J. Pettijohn. Another popular classification is that of R.L. Folk (1974). Although these classifications were not intended to have tectonic significance, the relative proportions of quartz, feldspar, and fragments are good indicators of the tectonic regime. It is possible to discriminate between stable cratons (rich in quartz and feldspar), orogens (rich in quartz and fragments), and magmatic arcs (rich in feldspar and fragments).

Sandstones are first subdivided into two major textural groups, arenites and wackes. Arenites (the front triangular panel of Figure 4) consist of a sand-size framework component surrounded by pore spaces that are either empty (in the case of arenite sands) or filled with crystalline chemical cement (in the case of arenites). Wackes (the second triangular panel of Figure 4) consist of a sand-size framework component floating in a finer-grained pasty matrix of grains finer than 0.03 millimetre whose overall abundance exceeds 15 percent by volume. A third triangular panel in the background shows the natural transition from sandstones to mudrocks as the percentage of sand-size framework clasts decreases.

Further subdivision of both arenites and wackes into three specific sandstone families is based on the relative proportions of three major framework grain types: quartz (Q), feldspar (F), and rock fragments (R for rock fragment, or L for lithic fragment). For example, quartz arenites are rocks whose sand grains consist of at least 95 percent quartz. If the sand grains consist of more than 25 percent feldspar (and feldspar grains are in excess of rock fragments), the rock is termed arkosic arenite or “arkose,” although such sandstones are also somewhat loosely referred to as feldspathic sandstones. In subarkosic arenite (or subarkose), feldspar sand grains likewise exceed rock fragments but range in abundance from 5 to 15 percent. Lithic arenites have rock fragments that exceed feldspar grains; the abundance of rock fragments is greater than 25 percent. Sublithic arenites likewise contain more rock fragments than feldspar, but the amount of rock fragments is lower, ranging from 5 to 25 percent. Lithic arenites can be further subdivided according to the nature of the rock fragments, as shown in the smaller triangle of Figure 4. This classification scheme also recognizes three major types of wackes or graywackes that are roughly analogous with the three major arenite groups: quartz wacke, feldspathic wacke (with the subvariety arkosic wacke), and lithic wacke. The three major arenite sandstone families are separately described below, but the varieties of wacke can be conveniently considered together as a single group.

Quartz arenites

Quartz arenites are usually white, but they may be any other colour; cementation by hematite, for example, makes them red. They are usually well sorted and well rounded (supermature) and often represent ancient dune, beach, or shallow marine deposits. Characteristically, they are ripple-marked or cross-bedded and occur as widespread thin blanket sands. On chemical analysis, some are found to contain more than 99 percent SiO2 (quartz). Most commonly they are cemented with quartz, but calcite and iron oxide frequently serve as cements as well.

This type of sandstone is widespread in stable areas of continents surrounding the craton, such as central North America (St. Peter Sandstone of Ordovician age [about 505 to 438 million years old]), central Australia, or the Russian Platform, and are particularly common in Paleozoic strata (that formed from 570 to 245 million years ago). Quartz arenites have formed in the past when large areas of subcontinental dimensions were tectonically stable (not subject to uplift or deformation) and of low relief, so that extensive weathering could take place, accompanied by prolonged abrasion and sorting. This process eliminated all the unstable or readily decomposed minerals such as feldspar or rock fragments and concentrated pure quartz together with trace amounts of zircon, tourmaline, and various other resistant heavy minerals.

Quartz arenites have also accumulated to thicknesses of hundreds and even thousands of metres on the continental shelf areas produced as passive continental margins develop during the early stages of continental rifting and the opening of an ocean basin. These thick, continental margin deposits form only if source areas are sufficiently stable to permit beach abrasion and intense chemical weathering capable of destroying rock fragments and feldspars. Subsequent ocean basin closure and continental collision deforms the continental shelf and rise assemblages, incorporating clean quartz arenite units into the resulting folded and faulted mountain system, typically as major ridges. Examples include the Cambrian Chilhowee Group and Silurian Tuscarora Sandstone and Clinch Sandstone formations in the Appalachian Mountains of eastern North America and the Flathead Sandstone and Tapeats Sandstone of the Rocky Mountains in the western part of the continent.

Lithic arenites

Lithic arenites occur in several subvarieties, but they are normally gray or of salt-and-pepper appearance because of the inclusion of dark-coloured rock fragments. Most commonly, fragments of metamorphic rocks such as slate, phyllite, or schist predominate, producing phyllarenite. If volcanic rock fragments such as andesite and basalt are most abundant, the rock is termed a volcanic arenite. If chert and carbonate rock fragments are predominant, the name chert or calclithite is applied.

Lithic arenites are usually rich in mica and texturally immature; the silicon dioxide content is 60–70 percent; aluminum oxide is 15 percent; and potassium, sodium, iron (Fe), calcium (Ca), and magnesium (Mg) are present in lesser amounts. Lithic arenites are very common in the geologic record, are widespread geographically, and are of all ages. They generally were formed as the result of rapid uplift, intense erosion, and high rates of deposition. Many of the classic postorogenic clastic wedge systems found in the major mountain systems of the world contain abundant lithic arenites. In the Appalachians, these include the Ordovician Juniata Formation of the Taconic clastic wedge, the Devonian Catskill Formation of the Acadian clastic wedge, and the Pocono and Mauch Chunk formations of the Alleghenian clastic wedge. Most lithic arenites are deposited as fluvial apron, deltaic, coastal plain, and shallow marine sandstones, interbedded with great thicknesses of shale and frequently with beds of coal or limestone. If they are deposited in an oxidizing environment such as a well-drained river system, they are reddish (e.g., the Catskill Formation of the northeastern United States and the Devonian Old Red Sandstone of England).

Wackes

Wacke, or graywacke, is the name applied to generally dark-coloured, very strongly bonded sandstones that consist of a heterogeneous mixture of rock fragments, feldspar, and quartz of sand size, together with appreciable amounts of mud matrix. Almost all wackes originated in the sea, and many were deposited in deep water by turbidity currents.

Wackes typically are poorly sorted, and the grain sizes present range over three orders of magnitude—e.g., from 2 to 2,000 micrometres (8×10−5 to 8×10−2 inch). Commonly, the coarsest part of a wacke bed is its base, where pebbles may be abundant. Shale fragments, which represent lumps of mud eroded from bottom sediments by the depositing current, may be concentrated elsewhere in the bed.

Many wackes contain much mud, typically 15–40 percent, and this increases as the mean grain size of the rock decreases. The particles forming the rock are typically angular. This, and the presence of the interstitial mud matrix, has led to these rocks being called “microbreccias.” The fabric and texture indicate that the sediments were carried only a short distance and were subject to very little reworking by currents after deposition.

The most widespread internal structure of wackes is graded bedding, although some sequences display it poorly. Sets of cross strata more than three centimetres thick are rare, but thinner sets are very common. Parallel lamination is widespread, and convolute bedding is usually present. These internal structures are arranged within wacke beds in a regular sequence. They appear to result from the action of a single current flow and are related to changes in the hydraulics of the depositing current. In some beds, the upper part of the sequence of structures is missing, presumably because of erosion or nondeposition. In others, the lower part is missing. This has been attributed to change in the hydraulic properties of the depositing current as it moves away from its source and its velocity decreases to the point at which the first sediment deposited is laminated, rather than massive and graded as is the case closer to the source.

The most typical external structures of wacke beds are sole markings, which occur on their undersurfaces. Flute and groove molds are the most characteristic, but many other structures have been recorded.

The upper surfaces of wacke beds are less well characterized by sedimentary structures. The most typical are current lineation and various worm tracks, particularly of the highly sinuous form Nereites. Apart from these trace fossils, wackes are usually sparsely fossiliferous. Where fossils occur they are generally free-floating organisms (graptolites, foraminiferans) that have settled to the bottom, or bottom-living (benthic), shallow-water organisms displaced into deeper water as part of the sediment mass.

Wackes are chemically homogeneous and are generally rich in aluminum oxide (Al2O3), ferrous oxide (FeO) + ferric oxide (Fe2O3), magnesium oxide (MgO), and soda (Na2O). The abundance of soda relative to potash (K2O) (reflecting a typically high sodium plagioclase feldspar content) and dominance of ferrous oxide over ferric oxide (reflecting large amounts of chlorite in the matrix) chemically distinguishes wackes from the three arenite families. The bulk composition of most wackes mimics that of their source owing to a lack of chemical differentiation by weathering and sorting. The matrix component, which is by definition any clasts 30 micrometres or finer, allows wackes to be differentiated from the other major sandstones. To be characterized as a wacke, its matrix component must equal or exceed 15 percent; in some cases more than 50 percent matrix has been reported. The origin of the matrix component, however, is controversial. Even though laboratory studies demonstrate that gravity-driven, bottom-hugging turbidity currents deposit sand-size grains together with mud-size clasts, modern deep-sea fan and abyssal plain sands (turbidites) have a matrix component that seldom exceeds 10 percent. A large portion of the matrix in ancient wackes must therefore be secondary, derived either from the disaggregation of feldspar and fine-grained lithic fragments like shale, phyllite, and volcanic rocks or from the postdepositional infiltration of clay- and silt-size clasts from overlying beds.

Wackes are widespread in the geologic record and occur throughout geologic history. They typically are not found in association with sedimentary rocks that accumulate upon stable continental blocks and are instead confined either to intensely deformed mountain systems or to their modern analogues: ocean trenches, the continental slope and rise, and abyssal plain areas. Many, perhaps most, wackes are redeposited marine sands derived from source areas in which weathering, erosion, and deposition are too rapid to permit chemical differentiation and the breakdown of unstable components. Wackes of Archean age (those formed from 3.8 to 2.5 billion years ago) constitute the dominant sandstone type in the classic greenstone belts of the Precambrian shields (large areas of basement rocks in a craton that formed 3.8 billion to 570 million years ago around which younger sedimentary rocks have been deposited). They probably accumulated in rapidly subsiding trenches and ocean basins that surrounded primitive continental blocks. Proterozoic wackes (those formed from about 2.5 billion to 570 million years ago) are dominantly trench and ocean basin deposits, as are wackes of Phanerozoic age (those formed from 570 million years ago to the present day). They represent the accumulation of sand-size prisms of material that today are deposited both within ocean trenches (e.g., the modern trenches off Indonesia) and as submarine fan aprons (e.g., the Astoria Fan off the Pacific coast of Washington and Oregon in the United States) developed at the base of the continental slope at the mouths of submarine canyons. More distal carpets of wacke sand can extend for thousands of square kilometres across oceanic abyssal plains. Classic examples of the continental margin and ocean basin deposits include the late Precambrian Ocoee Supergroup and Ordovician Martinsburg Formation of the Appalachians, the Jurassic and Cretaceous Franciscan Formation of the Pacific Coast Ranges of California, much of the Alpine flysch (see below) of Switzerland and France, and many of the famous turbidite sands found in the Italian Apennines.

The feature common to all modern depositional sites is that they adjoin landmasses in areas of high submarine relief. The landmass may be a continent bordered by either a passive, aseismic margin (for example, the eastern margin of North America) or a seismically active margin like that found along the western coast of both North and South America. The landmass can also be an active volcanic arc such as the Aleutian Islands chain or the Japan islands arc. The critical factor is the close proximity of topographically high and emergent clastic source areas and steeply sloped submarine depositional slopes, basins, or trenches.