Recent Marine Sediments

'Deep-Sea Sediments' focuses on the sedimentary processes operating within the various modern and ancient deep-sea environments. The chapters track the way of sedimentary particles from continental erosion or production in the marine realm, to transport into the deep sea, to final deposition on the sea floor.

The processes occurring in surface marine sediments have a profound effect on the local and global cycling of many elements. This graduate text presents the fundamentals of marine sediment geochemistry by examining the complex chemical, biological, and physical processes that contribute to the conversion of these sediments to rock, a process known as early diagenesis. Research over the past three decades has uncovered the fact that the oxidation of organic matter deposited in sediment acts as a causative agent for many early diagenetic changes. Summarizing and discussing these findings and providing a much-needed update to Robert Berner's Early Diagenesis: A Theoretical Approach, David J. Burdige describes the ways to quantify geochemical processes in marine sediment. By doing so, he offers a deeper understanding of the cycling of elements such as carbon, nitrogen, and phosphorus, along with important metals such as iron and manganese. No other book presents such an in-depth look at marine sediment geochemistry. Including the most up-to-date research, a complete survey of the subject, explanatory text, and the most recent mathematical formulations that have contributed to our greater understanding of early diagenesis, Geochemistry of Marine Sediments will interest graduate students of geology, geochemistry, and oceanography, as well as the broader community of earth scientists. It is poised to become the standard text on the subject for years to come.

Over 60% of the Earth's surface is covered with deep marine sediments, however, until the early 1980s, no comprehensive text books appeared to support the rapid expansion in the study of these sediments. While the whole field of marine geology has expanded enormously and entirely new disciplines, such as paleoceanography, have been developed, there remains a lack of reference texts on study techniques that investigators in the marine community can turn to. Minerals and Mineraloids in Marine Sediments is an optical identifica tion guide that I believe will become a standard reference text for use in the microscope analysis of marine sediment& and sedimentary rocks. The systematic collection of sediment cores from the deep ocean floor began in earnest with the Swedish Deep Sea Expedition, 1947-1948. Much of the microscopic examination of the sediments collected in these piston cores (10 m+ long) was conducted on separated grain mounts or thin sections of impregnated sediments. By the late 1960s a simpler technique of examining a mounted smear of the cored silt and clay size sediment on a microscope slide had become standard practice in American oceanographic institutions. This semi quantitative technique became the standard tool used in core description aboard Glomar Challenger through the 15 years of the Deep Sea Drilling Project (DSDP), 1968-1983. Visual percentage estimates of biogenic and mineral components were made using petrologic micro scopes.

Few fields of research in the earth sciences have produced as much data and litera ture as the study of carbonate sediments and rocks. The past 25 years in particular, have seen a significant increase in studies concerning modern marine and fresh water carbonates. With the present worldwide interest in oceanographic research, marine carbonates have received the bulk of the attention, particularly with respect to shallow-water sediments. However, in terms of the variety of environ ments, compositions and modes of formation, non-marine carbonates probably encompass a wider spectrum than do marine types. Our purpose is to present a two-volume treatise on carbonate sediments and rocks, both marine and non-marine. We have confined ourselves to the discussion of modern (Holocene) environments, sediments and components, assuming that the compilation of these data will not only be relevant to those working with modern carbonates but will also serve as a necessary reference source for those interested in ancient analogs. The first volume, by MILLIMAN, deals almost exclu sively with marine environments, while the second volume, by MULLER and FORST NER, will concentrate on the non-marine carbonates.