Unraveling cementation environment and patterns of Holocene beachrocks in the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Aqaba: stable isotope approach

Abstract

1 King Fahd Uni ver sity of Pe tro leum and Min er als, De part ment of Earth Sci ences, Dhahran 3126, P.O. Box 1400, Saudi Ara bia Koeshidayatullah, A., Al-Ramadan, A., 2014. Un rav el ing ce men ta tion en vi ron ment and pat terns of Ho lo cene beachrocks in the Ara bian Gulf and the Gulf of Aqaba: sta ble iso tope ap proach. Geo log i cal Quar terly, 58 (2): 207-216, doi: 10.7306/gq.1144 This pa per anal y ses Ho lo cene beachrocks from the Ara bian Gulf and the Gulf of Aqaba to ex plain the mech a nisms that in fluence the ce men ta tion pro cess in these ar eas. Ho lo cene beachrocks in the Gulf of Aqaba are com posed of pre dom i nantly terrigenous ma te rial de rived from ero sion of ad ja cent up lifted Pre cam brian base ment, while the beachrocks in the Ara bian Gulf are com posed mainly of ma rine bioclasts and wind-blown siliciclastic sands. The ce ments of beachrocks in both ar eas show three tex tural va ri et ies: (1) isopachous phreatic acicular ar agon ite; (2) a micritic en ve lope of high-Mg cal cite (HMC); (3) meniscus and grav i ta tional vadose HMC. Ra dio car bon dat ing of beachrock sam ples from the Ara bian Gulf yielded ages from ca. 2300 to 660 yr cal BP whereas sam ples from the Gulf of Aqaba range in age be tween 5500 and 2800 yr cal BP. Ox y gen iso tope val ues range from 2.6 to 4.4‰ re spec tively for the Ara bian Gulf whereas the Gulf of Aqaba val ues range from 1.2 to 1.5‰. Car bon iso tope val ues range from 3.2 to 5.9‰ for the Ara bian Gulf whereas those from the Gulf of Aqaba range from 3.8 to 4.6‰. The val ues of d 18 O VPDB and d 13 C VPDB in the beachrocks of both ar eas sug gest a ma rine or i gin. The beachrocks of the Ara bian Gulf were pre cip i tated un der high evap o ra tion con di tions, while beachrocks from the Gulf of Aqaba were pre cip itated in nor mal shal low-ma rine con di tions. The min er al ogy and tex tural hab its sug gest that ce men ta tion of these beachrocks started within the shal low-ma rine phreatic zone.

Impact of magmatic intrusion on diagenesis of shallow marine sandstones: An example from Qasim Formation, Northwest Saudi Arabia

“…The quality of hydrocarbon reservoirs is strongly influenced by their burial history and the types of diagenetic alterations they have been subjected to (Koeshidayatullah and Al-Ramadan, 2014;Worden et al, 2018;Al-Ramadan et al, 2019;Hussain et al, 2022;Bello et al, 2023a;Bello et al, 2023b). Reservoir quality evolution pathways of sandstones are strongly controlled by several parameters, including detrital mineralogy, primary depositional facies, diagenesis, and composition and flow patterns of basinal fluids (Al-Ramadan et al, 2004;Al-Ramadan et al, 2017;Al-Ramadan, 2021;Bello et al, 2022a;Hussain et al, 2023).…”

Beachrock as a Paleoshoreline Indicator: Example from Wadi Al-Hamd, South Al-Wajh, Saudi Arabia

“…Beachrocks of different composition and grain size are distributed intermittently along the Saudi Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba coasts. They consist mainly of gravel-and sandsized siliciclastic grains and/or calcareous skeletal remains, cemented by aragonite and/or high Mg-calcite (HMC) and, rarely, low Mg-calcite [22,[26][27][28][29]. The beachrocks along the Saudi Red Sea and the Gulf of Aqaba coasts have received little attention compared to the Egyptian and Jordanian coasts ( [19,25,[30][31][32]].…”

Depositional Setting and Cementation Pattern of Al-Mejarma Beachrocks, Saudi Arabia: A Proxy for the Late Quaternary Red Sea Coastal Evolution

“…Beachrocks are widely distributed along the Saudi Red Sea and Gulf of Aqaba coasts [32][33][34][35][36]. Despite their considerable extent, the research on beachrock along the Saudi Red Sea coast is still in earlier stages and is underrepresented.…”