Examine the list of mineral species present in the samples, jot down mineral formation conditions for each of the species, and in this exercise, you would understand what are the mineral groupings that occur in your sample(s).

Then, as your grouping dictate, interpret the provenance and paleoenvironment.

All the best

Hi Ashock,

There are quite a few things you can do here and I would direct you to the publications by Andrew Morton and Andrew Hurst and references within(http://sp.lyellcollection.org/content/specpubgsl/386/1/7.full.pdf). You will want to do some heavy mineral separations on the sands to get an idea of their morphology as this will also tell you a lot about your provenance and paleoclimate. Bulk geochemistry only tells you so much. I would also recommend emailing Andrew Morton for advice. He is a world expert and, from personal experience, always happy to provide help.

All the best,

Scott.

Dear Mr. Shaw,

you can use heavy-, light - and clay minerals as provenance and/or paleoclimtological marker, it simply depends upon your experience , knowledge and the devices of analysis (from petrographic microscopy to radiometric age dating) that can avail yourself. Duricrusts may be good climate indicators in some cases, while a clay mineralogical study well done in terms of mineralogy and chronology may provide you with essential data for basin analysis. I do/did a lot of heavy mineral and clay mineral analysis but an x-ray run will hardly elucidate you very much. Moreover it is the reasonable combination of methods that helps you come to grips with the issue and make some progress. Your question should be much more specific and you should show us the sequence where you took the samples from. Also consider a chemical facies analysis along with your mineralogical one.

I wish you much success

H.G.Dill

I go with heavy minerals separation techniques to separate specific mineral species such as zircon, monazite and tourmaline. I would also recommend mineral chemistry for the separated grains to know exactly the source rocks. I have used monazite and zircon chemistry to conclude their sediments sources. Please see

Article Testing the validity of detrital zircon chemistry as a prove...

Article Mineral chemistry of monazite from the black sand deposits, ...

It is comparitively easy to understand the climate and provinance for present day sedimentary deposits rather than the ancient ones belonging to earlier geological periods where you have to put to use your mineral data for better understanding then geographical conditions, sediment deposition, and climatic conditions.

The main clast composition of the detritus coupled with heavy mineral suite will give the provinance, whereas the nature of mineral alterations and extent of alterations which are reflected by authigenic minerals (mainly clay minerals/ chlorite/ calcite/ silica/ferrugenous material) that form during diagenesis will give you an idea about the climatic conditions and depositional environment.

heavy and clay minerals are good indicators...

For example

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1023/A%3A1003212721020

Chemical analysis of sediment and ratios like Ca/Fe, Sr values, K/Al will give provinances

I am totally agree with the previous comments by scientists.

Heavy mineral separation and studied under microscope as well as geochemically are very good method for provenance determining .

Concerning the climate determination the clay mineral studies are important and will give good results.

Dear Ashok Shaw,

To get the precise answer, you may show us the case, because determining the provenance looks like solving a puzzle. For example, after detritus are eroded from source area, they are transported and deposited in river, foreland basin or flood plain. Then the detritus can be eroded and transported again when flooding or other kinds of eroding events occur. This process is called reworking of detritus. This process could be problematic to provenance studies. Therefore, you may not depend on a single mineral.

Regards,

Rzger Abdula