Geology Week 6 Sedimentary Rocks

- THE ROCK CYCLE - this is the conversion of one type of rock into another.
- Mineral Formation -
Sedimentary rocks that form from new minerals in two ways:
- Precipitation from a solution or like the salt that
crstalizes from to much water
in water.
- Biomineralization - created by biological life processes.
- The rest of the minerals are based on the rocks that came
before.
- Sedimentary rocks - Almost all the rocks on the earth surface. >
including all sediments or
little pieces of rocks, and can be from other rocks or life
processes. > can show environmental
markers.
- Why do we care about sedimentary rocks? - Besides aesthetics, it
contains the record of earth history
and the history of Life itself, we can tell what Earth
environment looked like from rocks like
if it was a desert or underwater, and it contains all of our
fossil fuel and these are created
by sedimentary geologic processes.
- FOUR types of Sedimentary rock - (sometimes called chemical
sedimentary rocks as a group) (ON THE TEST)
- CLASTIC - composed of clasts which are pieces of prexisting
rock or sediment that become
glued together to form clastic rock. MOST COMMON TYPE.
- BIOCHEMICAL/BIOGENIC - biologically mediated MINERALIZATION
Lfie proceesses caused new
minerals to form and become part of the rock.
- ORGANIC - dead body tissues, coal,
- CHEMICAL - minerals and rocks precipitated by solution, like
caves, evaporites, spring
deposits,
- CLASSES of Sedimentary rocks - Characterized by composition
- Siliceuos - QUARTZ RICH - 70-85% of all sedimentary rocks, like
felsic rock (ONLY igneous)
- they're chemically resistent, hard, surive longer
- They're the most common because of weathering, the're
clastic rock built out of other
rocks.
= Argillaceous - CLAY RICH - These would be weaker and weather
out to sweep out to the ocean
or gets subducted
= Carbonates - CALCITE or DOLAMITE -
- BIOCHEMICAL/BIOGENIC rocks - a common type is biochemical limestone
- often composed of shell debris from diverse creatures
= and can be carbonate or siliceous
- Corals are related to jellyfish and build communities
- ORGANIC Sedimentary rock - Made of organic carbon, the soft tissues
of living things
- COAL - altered remains of fossil vegetation, mostly swampy
forests 250 million years ago
thick deposits of tree built up on top of each other to be
buried to become coal.
Coal beds are enormous and we will not run out of that for
a very long time, but it
burns in ways that really hurt the environment.
 - OIL SHALE - shale with heat altered organic matter.
- Other Chemical sedimentary rocks = there are rocks caused by the
direct precipitation of minerals
Evaporates are minerals left after the evaporates like salt
residue.
= Caves are formed by limestone with water flowing through it and
carves out the caves,
once air and water gain access then things like stalagtites
form,

-CLASTIC Sedimentary rocks - produced by other pieces of rocks

(sediment) glued together to form new rock
- HOW THEY FORM - Clastic rock is formed through
- WEathering, by nature or chemical weathering
- Erosion - where the rock starts to move or chipping
away its source
- Transportation - Wind moves sediment, water pushes
things, glaciers carving
- Deposition - arrival point of sediment material.
- Lithification - turning loose sediment in to glued
together rock.
- Weathering two types
- phyiscal weathering - breaking up the rocks into
transportable pieces/clasts
- Thermal expansion - Heating by the sun,
outside of the rock gets
heated and expands more than the inside, over
the time the minerals
separate from each other and onion layers peel
off, it also occurs
through differentiation of different types of
minerals/properties
which breaks the glue keeping the rock together
- Root Wedging - Rocks get cracks and at some
point a local plant grows
a root inside and the root grows with enough
force to pull a rock apart.
- Frost wedging - Water coats a crack and
freezes and expands many times
until it breaks.
- salt wedging - Similar to the frost wedging
but salt is the expanding
agent
- Abrasian - sandpaper effect, silt, sand, or
clasts scratching
surfaces sticking out, sandblasting the surface
until its flattened.
- Jointing - Cracks caused by changes in
stress, forming stack of brick
formations with differential pressure to form
these cracks.
Exfoliation jointing is more of differential
onion peels of rock
formations.
- chemical weathering - reactions that transform
minerals to ones stable at
earth surface. A mineral will not be in its
most stable form, so itll be
attacked and altered into one more suitable for
the surface. Iron.
- slow process -
- The process by which rocks are broken down by
chemical reactions
this causes one material to trn into another.
- Oxidiation - Rusting of iron, oxygen mixes
with iron to create
iron oxide. this is the reaction of rock
minerals with oxygen, thus
changing the composition of the rock. When
minerals in rock oxidize
they become less resistant to weathering.
- Hydrolysis - Alteration by water - water
breaks the bonds of molecules
to create new minerals typically less
resistant to weathering
like feldspars into clay.
- Carbonation - Dissolution of carbon material
by acid. Is where
usually weak acid alter the minerals. Acid
comes from life or acid rain
This is common in calcitic rocks (limestone)
and causes dissolution
, which may leave behind holes and caves.
- Hydration/Dehydration - Gypsum
transformation.
- RATE of chemical weathering - Faster the
weathering, the least stable
it is, and vice versa. Less stable minerals
chemically weather first.
- Mica and Feldspar turn into Clay, Quartz is
more robust.
- More Surface area, speeds chemical AND
physical weathering
Fewer cracks less surface area, more
cracks more surface area
-SEDIMENT MATURITY
- Measure of a function of time and transfer
distance of sediments and
and materials. We can define the level of
weathering as a fucntion of
time and transport distance with Maturity
testng.
- Character of the sediment changes, sharper
rocks mean more immature
rocks, force is applied over time so the
corners are the first to
weather.
- Biggest clasts or sediment rocks, the less
mature it is,
- The size hierarchy: Boulders > Cobbles >
Pebbles > Sand (2mm clasts)
> Silt, smallest visible > Clay size
- Silt gets harder to break down, like
how many times can you
snap a stick in half?
- SORTING - Immature sorting has more angular
pieces very many diff
sized pieces, and very well sorted have very
similar sized pieces
in similar shapes. Closer to its source, the
more irrgular the sizes.
- Compositional Maturity - unstable minerals of
immature sediment
become more compositionally mature over time
becoming mostly quartz
grains.
- Weathering always happens more rapidly the higher
you are. Mountainous rocks
weather much faster than those in the ocean. higher
altitudes have coarser
rock to medium grained to finer and finer by the time
it deposits to the ocean.
- Maturity is determined by the character of the
sediment. Look past the rock
to the sediment shape and form.
-DIAGENESIS - Where rock is cemented together by squeezing it and
the carbonate, silica, or iron
becomes a single stone. It happens by recrystalization and
or fluid transport through
the sediment. It crystalizes in such a way that it binds to
the minerals around it.

- LITHIFICATION = the process of becoming a stone.

- SEDIMENTARY STRUCTURES- TEST WILL INCLUDE DIAGRAMS OF BEDS AND MARKS AND
THE DIRECTION THEY FLOW***
- BEDDING - A bed is layer in sedimentary rocks and are typically flat.
Beds are formed from changes
in depositional conditions. Layers of silt and gravel are most
typical,
(Graded Bedding - when a mix of different sized sediments get
deposited at the same time, the
bigger sediment settles out first, and the smallest, finest ,
settles out last)
- RIPPLEMARKS - Two types
- Assymmetical - caused by current flowing in one direction
in river conditions, one
side is gentler and the other is steep.
- Symmetrical - caused by current flowing back and forth,
flood plains. You'll see
this on the beach under the water, because of the back and
forth motion of thewaves
- MUDCRACKS - Mud contracts when it dries and cracks, sand falls into
cracks, the sediment lithifies
over time the mud erodes away, the cracks are preserved in the
sand. Mud is known to shrink.
- Mud expands when wet, and contracts when dry,
- CROSSBEDDING - Formed from master beds, but within it are angled
swooping layers which are crossbeds
Formed by water or wind currents taht move up a gentle side and
the steeper side is the
downward motion, thats how we can determine the direction flow
that formed it.
- BURROWS - Root structures, and living animals can leave traces of
burrows in the sediment.
-Deposits -
- Evaporite Deposits - Salt is deposited from a stream into a bed of
water, the water evaporates and
and the salt precipitates.
- Stream channel deposits - have bulging channel filled sections
- Delta deposits - fanned areas of deposits stemming from a thicker
primary trunk stream.
-
-STRATIGRAPHY = the study of succession of beds and formations
- SOILS AND SEDIMENTS - Soil is sediment plus recent organic material, which
is the "living" part of sediments
where plants and microbes grow.
= Very important because we'd have no agriculture - they have a well
defined structure due to leaching
at the surface and accumulation deeper down.