Weathering and Sedimentation in the Rock Cycle

• Our geology so far has focused on internally-driven processes:

plate tectonics, magmatism, metamorphism, orogeny.
• The rest of geology is
driven by surface
processes: the
hydrologic cycle
(rainfall, streams,
ice), gravity, aqueous
chemistry.
• Weathering and erosion
are the processes that
form and transport form
sediment.
• Sedimentation, burial and
lithification are the
processes that transform
weathering products into
sedimentary rocks.
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 Weathering and Sedimentation in the Rock Cycle
• A more detailed view of the surface-driven parts of the rock cycle
shows the various steps between source rock and sedimentary
product

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 Weathering: decomposition of rocks

• There is a distinction between

weathering and erosion:
– Weathering converts exposed
rock to soil in place
– Erosion transports dissolved
or fragmented material from
the source area where
weathering is occurring to a
depositional environment .
– Most of the earth’s surface is
covered by exposure of
sediment or sedimentary rock,
by area.
– But the sediment layer is thin
in most places, with respect to
overall crustal thickness, so
sedimentary rock is a minor
volume fraction of the crust
(in part by definition: once
buried to the mid-crust,
sediments get cooked to
metasediments).
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Weathering: chemical and physical
• The destruction of rocks at the Earth’s
surface by weathering has two
fundamental modes of operation:
– Chemical weathering is dissolution or
alteration of the original minerals,
usually by reactions with aqueous
solutions
• Chemical weathering puts ions from
the source minerals into solution for
subsequent erosion by transport in
flowing water as dissolved load.
– Physical weathering is fragmentation
into progressively smaller particles,
from intact outcrop to boulders and on
down to mineral fragments and sand
grains.
• Physical weathering makes loose pieces
of rock available for downslope
movement by mass wasting or transport
in flowing water as suspended or bed
load.

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 Chemical Weathering

• Chemical weathering is driven by

thermodynamic energy minimization, just
like chemical reactions at high
temperature.
– The system seeks the most stable
assemblage of phases.
– The differences are that (1) kinetics are
slow and metastability is common; (2) the
stable minerals under wet, ambient
conditions are different from those at high
T and P; (3) solubility in water and its
dependence on water chemistry (notably
pH) are major determinants in the stability
of minerals in weathering.
• A fresh rock made of olivine and
pyroxenes will end up as clays and iron
oxides, with other elements in solution
• A fresh rock made of feldspars and quartz
will end up as clays, hydroxides, and
quartz in most waters.

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Chemical Weathering

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 Chemical Weathering
• The most common alteration product of feldspars is kaolinite, Al2Si2O5(OH)4,
which serves as a model for the formation of clays by weathering generally.
– The reactions of feldspars to kaolinite illustrate some of the basic trends:
• K, Na, Ca are highly soluble and readily leached by chemical weathering.
• Excess Si can be removed as silicic acid although quartz is relatively insoluble.
• Al is extremely insoluble, and is essentially conserved as source rock is converted to clays.
• Weathering is a hydration process, leaving H 2O bound in the altered minerals.
– 2 KAlSi3O8 + 9 H2O + 2 H+ -> Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + 2 K+ + 4 H4SiO4
• Note the H+ on the left-hand side…only acidic water can drive this reaction
• Natural waters are acidic due to equilibrium of carbonic
acid with CO2 in the atmosphere
– CO2 (g) + H2O = H2CO3
– 2 KAlSi3O8 + 9 H2O + 2 H2CO3 ->
Al2Si2O5(OH)4 + 2 K+ + 4 H4SiO4 + 2HCO3–
– Alteration of rock transforms acidic rainwater into
neutral surface or ground water, with bicarbonate the
dominant species (relative to CO2 and CO32–).
– Mg and Fe2+ are also readily leached, but Fe3+ is very
insoluble…the ultimate residue of alteration of mafic
rocks is hematite.

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 Chemical Weathering
• Knowing the chemistry of reaction of minerals to kaolinite, it is possible to
reconstruct from the dissolved ions in stream water the amount of each source
mineral that reacted with the water.

• Questions: How do you do the correction for atmospheric input? Do the source
minerals in the Sierra Nevada all weather at equal rates?
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 Chemical Weathering
• Some minerals are congruently soluble in acidic water, leaving no residue
– The most abundant is calcite: CaCO3 + H2CO3 = Ca2+ + 2HCO3– (the Tums reaction)
– Effects of dissolution (and precipitation) of calcite can be dramatic, to say the least.

Sinkhole Speleothems

Karst terrain 9
 Rates of Chemical
Weathering
• Many factors affect the rate
at which a rock will
weather, as summarized
here.
• Some of these variables are
local (e.g., source rock),
some are global. These
include temperature and
pCO2, leading to the CO2-
weathering feedback cycle.

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 Physical Weathering
• Anything that promotes disaggregration of a rock so that pieces can form soil or be
eroded away by wind, water, or gravity transport is physical weathering.
– The distinction between physical weathering and erosion is subtle, but think of physical
weathering as fragmenting the rock and erosion as carrying the fragments away; at times
these may be the same event, of course.
• Rocks that are jointed or faulted or have pre-existing weak zones are most easily
weathered.
– Few of the stresses associated with physical weathering are significant compared to the
tensile strength of intact rocks; something, has to start the process, either initial cracks and
weaknesses or chemical attack on mineral cohesion.
• Organisms, especially plants (think tree roots), are fond of breaking up rocks.
• Freeze-thaw, frost wedging, frost heave…the volume change between ice and water
is effective in widening cracks in rock in suitable climates.
• Physical abrasion by flowing air or water, or more often by rock particles already
mobilized by water or wind (think Fossil Falls).
• Tectonics…rocks caught in a fault zone are definitely undergoing physical
weathering.
• Etc.

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 Weathering feedbacks: chemical and physical
• Physical weathering and
chemical weathering
generally proceed in
parallel in most
environments.
• Physical and chemical
weathering promote one
another:
– Formation of cracks by
physical weathering
increases reactive surface
area, promoting chemical
weathering.
– Chemical weathering
replaces intact
interlocking minerals with
weak clays or void space,
making the rock easier to
physically disaggregate,
promoting physical
weathering

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 Weathering feedbacks:
more generally
• Weathering of both kinds plays
key roles in several feedbacks.
• Tectonics affects weathering
through slopes and elevations,
climate affects weathering
through temperatures (via
chemical kinetics and freeze-
thaw), rainfall, pCO2, etc.
• Conversely, weathering and
erosion affect tectonics and
climate:
– Denudation by erosion must be
isostatically compensated and
so affect vertical motions of the
crust…
– Weathering controls water
chemistry, courses of streams
and groundwater, removes CO2
from the atmosphere, etc.

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 Erosion and Transport
• Between weathering and sedimentation, matter must be
transported from source to destination. This is erosion.
– We dealt with the landforms generated by erosion in the
geomorphology lecture; here our concern is with the effects of
transport on sedimentary rocks.
• Modes of transport:
– Gravity (short distances and steep slopes)
– Wind (small particles only)
– Glaciers
– Water
• Surface runoff carries dissolved, suspended, and bed loads
• Groundwater flow only carries dissolved load
– All these mechanisms carry products of physical
weathering and insoluble residues of chemical
weathering.
– Only water transport carries away leached soluble
products of chemical weathering.

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 Erosion and Transport
• Certain modes of transport physically modify and
physically and chemically sort particles en route.
• Size sorting by surface water runoff flow:
Current of a given
velocity can generally
carry all noncohesive
particles smaller than a
critical size; since
current velocity drops
with decreasing slopes
from mountains to
lowlands, it follows that
sediments evolve from
poorly sorted and
coarse-grained near
source to well-sorted
and finer grained with
increasing transport
distance.
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 Erosion and Transport
• Chemical sorting with
increasing transport distance
is like a continuation of
chemical weathering during
intermittent times when
particles are temporarily
deposited before further
transport; most stable
minerals are transported the
furthest.

• Textures of particles are

modified by abrasion during
wind or water transport.
Close to source particles are
angular; far from source
particles are rounded.

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 Sedimentation
• Eventually transported particles and dissolved ions reach a place where they can
be permanently deposited and accumulated. This is sedimentation.
• The sedimentary rocks that result from this accumulation are controlled by and
record the sedimentary environment where they were deposited.
– We interpret ancient sedimentary rocks by comparison to modern
environments where we can observe ongoing sedimentary processes and
relate them to the composition, texture, and structure of the resulting rocks.

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 Sedimentation
• Sediments and the environments
in which they form are
fundamentally divided into
clastic and chemical:
– Clastic sediments are made of
physically transported and
deposited particles (they may
later gain chemically grown
cement during diagenesis)
– Chemical sediments are grown
from solution, organically or
inorganically; biochemical
sediment more specifically
refers to minerals grown from
solution by organisms
• In some cases the relationship
between the environment and
the character of the sediment is
absolute and obvious (carbonate
in reefs, boulder-strewn till in
periglacial deposit, etc.); other
cases are more subtle.
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 Diagenesis
• The process of modification of
newly deposited sediments into
sedimentary rocks is diagenesis or
lithification.
– Processes include:
• physical compaction by the pressure of
overburden, accompanied by expulsion of
pore waters
• Growth of new diagenetic minerals and
continued growth of chemical sediments
from pore waters.
• Dissolution of soluble elements of clastic
rocks.
• Recrystallization and remineralization as
water chemistry, pressure, and
temperature evolve.
• At the high-T and P end, diagenesis
merges smoothly into the low-T and P
end of metamorphism. The distinction is
arbitrary.
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 Sedimentary Rocks
• The preserved end-result of weathering, erosion, transport,
sedimentation, and diagenesis is sedimentary rocks.
– Like sediments and sedimentary environments, the resulting rocks are divided
into clastic (or siliciclastic or volcaniclastic, etc.) and chemical (or
biochemical).
• Clastic rocks are classified by particle size (and sorting) and
composition.

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 Sedimentary Rocks
• Chemical sediments are primarily classified, of course, by
mineralogical composition.

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 Sedimentary rocks and environmental information
• How do sedimentary rocks preserve information about their
depositional environments?
– By composition, mineralogy and grain size, obviously, but also
through sedimentary structure
• Elements of sedimentary structure:
– Bedding
• Bed thickness, from finely laminated to massive

Vasquez formation: massive Burgess Shale:

fine
30 m

30 cm

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 Sedimentary structure
• Character of bedding, from simple horizontal laminae to cross-bedding,
ripples, soft-sediment deformation, or bioturbated.
• Cross-bedding indicates high and
unidirectional current velocity, often
winds in terrestrial settings, forming
sand dune lee-slopes.

• Ripple marks record back-and-forth action by waves in shallow water.

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 Sedimentary Structure
• Mud cracks demonstrate
drying-out of a thin layer of
sediment fine enough to
have significant cohesion.
Definite proof of terrestrial
setting or very shallow water
marginal marine.

MODERN ANCIENT
• What about this structure?
(Hint: it is not the surface of
the Moon)

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 Sedimentary Structure
• Soft-sediment deformation indicates slumping or compression of layers
before complete lithification.

• Bioturbation is the vertical

mixing of sedimentary layers by
burrowing organisms. Evidence
of such activity can be preserved
on bedding surfaces as trace
fossils. Indicative of water
depth, availability of nutrients
and oxygen, etc.

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 Sedimentary Structure
• Graded Bedding: sorting of particle sizes within beds indicates time dependence and hence process of deposition
– An environment in which a episodes of high-energy transport give way to periods of low-energy transport gives normal graded beds:

– Alluvial settings, with wandering channels that fill up and

become overbank deposits
– Continental slopes with turbidity currents

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 Carbonate Rocks
• Most carbonate rocks are entirely
biochemical sediment, made up of the body
parts of calcite or aragonite-precipitating
organisms
– Deep-sea carbonate ooze is made of foram shells
– Reef carbonates are made of coral reefs (usually)
– Stromatolites are formed by carbonate
precipitation by microorganisms

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 Tour of sedimentary environments

Let us go through each of the major categories of sedimentary

environment, keeping in mind the relationship between observable
processes in modern settings and the preserved features in ancient
examples, and the ways in which observation of a sedimentary rock
formation can be used to infer the type of setting and detailed
information about it. 28
Why study clastic sediment?

Sedimentary rocks make up only 7.9% of the Earth’s crust.

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66% of the surface of the Earth is covered by sediment or
sedimentary rocks.
Humans interact with the Earth largely at or near its surface.

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Sedimentary rocks record the history of changing
environments on Earth.

Based on the recognition of the signature of changing

environments over time, as preserved in the rock record.

Environmental interpretation of rocks

+
Age of rocks

= Earth History

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 Environmental interpretation:

The present is the key to the past.

By examining the characteristics of various environments on Earth

today we can interpret the environments in which ancient sediments
were deposited.

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Age of rocks:

Based on relative age (relative to associated rocks)

or
absolute age (radiometric dating).

Earth History:
 
The history of changing environments on Earth.

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