Abstract There is a big misunderstanding in the community of Chinese sedimentologists and was written into the textbooks since 1970s,that is,“during sediment transport in flowing water,unstable minerals will be eliminated,while the surviving minerals become rounded progressively,and minerals sizes get smaller”. This idea was wrongly applied in sandstone provenance analysis. This paper overviewed the literatures over one century on this topic,and introduced the research advances of modern river sand studies,especially on the physic controls of sand mineral,roundness,size during transportation. Numerous studies in big rivers sands in the world indicated that the unstable minerals such as olivine,pyroxene,amphibole,feldspars and lithic grains survive in thousands of kilometers transportation,while the sand size do not get smaller and sand roundness do not increase with distance downstream. Therefore,the idea to infer distance of provenance based on the amount of unstable minerals,size,and roundness of sandstones is not based on scientific investigation,and should be corrected in the textbooks.
Fund:Co-funded by the Chinese National Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar(No.41525007)and the National Natural Science Foundation of China(No.41472081)
Cite this article:
Hu Xiumian. A misunderstanding in provenance analysis: Sand changes of mineral,roundness, and size in flowing-water transportation[J]. JOPC, 2017, 19(1): 175-184.
Hu Xiumian. A misunderstanding in provenance analysis: Sand changes of mineral,roundness, and size in flowing-water transportation[J]. JOPC, 2017, 19(1): 175-184.
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