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Jeffrey F. Mount

Mixing of siliciclastic and carbonate sediments

in shallow shelf environments
ABSTRACT
The inhibiting effect that siliciclastic material has on
carbonate-secreting organisms has lead to the generalization that
sediments composed of mixtures of carbonate and siliciclastic
material should rarely form. However, many modern and ancient
shelf deposits contain a spectrum of sediments that are of "mixed"
composition. The processes responsible for this mixing can be
grouped into four categories: (1) punctuated mixing, where sporadic
storms and other extreme periodic events transfer sediments from
one depositional environment to another; (2) facies mixing, where
sediments are mixed along the diffuse boundaries between
contrasting facies; (3) in situ mixing, where the carbonate fraction
consists of the autochthonous or parautochthonous death
assemblages of calcareous organisms that accumulated on or within
siliciclastic substrates; and (4) source mixing, where admixtures
are formed by the uplift and erosion of nearby carbonate source
terranes. The allochemical constituents of mixed sediments are both
coralgal and foram-mollusc in composition. The foram-mollusc
assemblage is the most common because of the effects of increased
turbidity, unstable substrates, and the clogging of filter-feeding
mechanisms associated with a siliciclastic influx.

A)

In this paper I identify four sedimentary processes that lead to the

formation of "mixed" sediments in shallow shelf environments. The term
"mixed" is used here to indicate sediments composed of textural mixtures
of carbonate and siliciclastic material. Interstratified sequences of "pure"
carbonate and siliciclastic sediments, although formed by similar processes, are not considered. In addition, I do not attempt to describe facies
dynamics and the effects of changes in sea level or varying sedimentation
and subsidence rates. It is perhaps premature to attempt a synthesis of
these variables until the main processes are identified. The conclusions
presented here are drawn from a review of more than 150 modern and
ancient examples of mixed sediments on both open and rimmed shelves
(not all examples are referenced here). This paper is an initial synthesis
intended to focus further testing and refinement as more data become
available.
MIXING PROCESSES
In shelf environments the formation of sediments composed of mixtures of siliciclastic and carbonate material involves a variety of biologic
and sedimentologic processes. Summarized in Table 1 and depicted
schematically in Figure 1, these processes can be grouped into four
432

Transfer of subtidal te rrigenous

and carbonate muds onto tidal
flats by storm tides and waves.

Transport of tidal flat and nearshore siliciclastic belt sediments into deeper, subtidal
environments by storm-surgeebb. wind forcing, etc. /

FACIES MIXING ON RIMMED PLATFORMS

Mixing occurs along
m a r g i n s of reefs a n d
shoals in subtidal interreef, back-reef or forereef environments. Also
occurs adjacent to patch
reefs or reef mounds built
o n terrigenous mud substrates.

C)

INTRODUCTION
A common theme of sedimentology is that carbonate production in
shallow shelf environments is reduced by the influx of siliciclastic material and that, for the most part, the two sediments should not and do not
commingle. This separative view of siliciclastic and carbonate sediments
is best illustrated by the manner in which sedimentology texts are divided
into chapters (with the notable exception of Selley, 1970), the way sedimentologists tend to classify themselves (carbonate versus "clastic" sedirnentologists), and by the lack of a refined nomenclature for sediments or
rocks that are of mixed composition. However, recent symposia devoted
to the occurrence of mixed siliciclastic and carbonate sediments in both
the modern and the ancient deposits illustrate that mixed sediment is not
simply the odd exception to the rule, but is actually quite common
(Mcllreath and Ginsburg, 1982; Doyle and Roberts, 1983).

PUNCTUATED MIXING ON RIMMED PLATFORMS

Landward transport of peritidal carbonate sediments during major storms; formation of

spillover lobes, erosion of reefs
and shoals.
\

B)

Department of Geology
University of California
Davis, California 95616

Mixing occurs In narrow

zone between nearshore
siliciclastic belt/tidal flat
environments and deeper
subtidal carbonate environments. C o n t r o l l e d
primarily by coast-parallel currents and rates of
lateral facies migration.

Eoiian contribution of
siliciclastic detritus to
subtidal and tidal flat
carbonates.

IN SITU MIXING ON RIMMED PLATFORMS

Precipitation of carbonate cements, formation of algal
mats and in situ accumulation of carbonate allochems
and m u d in siliciclastic-dominated subtidal to intertidal environments.

Figure 1. Examples of mixing processes on rimmed, siliciclasticinfluenced carbonate platforms. Similar processes occur on ramps or
open shelves, although lack of shallow rim on outer shelf will change
their magnitude and distribution. Source mixing, not depicted here, is
caused by uplift and erosion of carbonate source terranes and admixture of carbonate detritus with siliciclastic material (see text).

general categories: (1) punctuated mixing, (2) facies mixing, (3) in situ
mixing, and (4) source mixing.
Punctuated Mixing
The basic concept that voluminous carbonate production does not
occur under the constant influx of siliciclastic sediment remains valid.
However, as Ager (1981) and others have pointed out, it may be the rare
or catastrophic sedimentation event that ultimately controls the stratigraphic record of a depositional system. This is particularly true for
mixed sediments, for two reasons. First, major storm events provide a
mechanism for the sporadic transfer of large amounts of sediment from
one facies to another. For example, storm-generated currents (wind forcing, storm-surge-ebb) can rapidly transport nearshore siliciclastic sediments into deeper water, carbonate-dominated environments (Kreisa,
1981). Conversely, on rimmed platforms, major storms can act to erode
sediments of the reef or shoal complex and redeposit them landward in
siliciclastic-dominated lagoon environments. Storm processes may also
cause mixing by supplying sediment from subtidal environments to tidal
flats. Second, the periodicity of mixing plays an important role in the
genesis of mixed sediments. Where the influx of siliciclastic sediments is
a rare event (i.e., not associated with typical, seasonal processes), benthic
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TABLE 1. GENESIS OF MIXED SILICICLASTIC AND CARBONATE SEDIMENTS

Type o
mixing

Punctuated

Facies

In Situ

Source

Process

Transfer of sediment
between contrasting
depositonal environments
during rare, high
intensity sedimentation
events

Mixing of sediments occurs along the diffuse

borders between contrasting facies

Mixing occurs through

the autochthonous generation of carbonate
material within siliciclastic sediments

Erosion of uplifted carbonate source terranes.

Admixtures of clastic
carbonates with siliciclastic material

Environment

Erosion of peritidal carbonates

or nearshore belt and tidal flat
siliciclastics. Deposition in
subtidal, carbonate or terrigenous mud-dominated environments
below fairweather wave-base.
Erosion of shallow subtidal sediments and deposition on tidal
flats and in shoals or reefs may
also occur

Mixing along interface between

nearshore siliciclastic b e l t
tidal flat facies and offshore
carbonates. Reef or shoal-derived
carbonates and tidal flat carbonates mix with subtidal, backreef, fore-reef and tidal channel
siliciclastics. Eolian sands mix
with nearshore and tidal flat
carbonates

Red Sea (Friedman, 1982; Roberts

and Murray, 1983)
Brazilian shelf (Leao, 1982)
Inner shelf of Venezuela (Weiss
et al, 1978)
Carboniferous, Morocco (Kelling
and Mullin, 1975)
Ordovician, Norway (Brenchley et
al, 1979)
Cambrian, Western U.S.A. (Sepkoski, 1982; Mount, 1982)
Cambrian, Virginia (Markello and
Read, 1981)
Precambrian, Norway (Tucker, 1982)

Eastern Gulf of Mexico (Holmes

and Evans, 1963; Doyle, 1982)
Mahe, Seychelles (Lewis, 1969)
Great Barrier Reef Province (Maxwell and Swinchatt, 1970)
Brazilian shelf (Milliman and
Summerhayes, 1975)
English Channel (Larsonneur et
al, 1982)
Miocene of Libya (Selley, 1969)
Oligocene of western New Zealand
(Nelson, 1978)
Cambrian of Sardinia (Colacicchi
and Gandin, 1982)

Mixing takes place dominantly in

subtidal, terrigenous mud-dominated environments where productivity is high. Also formed in
subtidal to intertidal environments by algal binding and by
inorganic precipitation of carbonate

Brazilian shelf (Milliman and

Summerhayes, 1975)
Inner shelf, Venezuela (Weiss et
al, 1978)
Puerto Rico shelf (Morelock et
al, 1983)
Oligocene of western New Zealand
(Nelson, 1978)
Ordovician of Virginia (Kreisa,
1981)

Occurs in marginal marine and

nearshore environments that are
proximal to exposed carbonate
source terranes

Inner Shelf, Venezuela (Weiss, et

al, 1978)
Miocene of Spain (Freeman, et al,
1983)
Mesozoic continental margin,
Greece (Price, 1977)

communities can become well established, generating abundant carbonate. When these communities are disrupted by major storm events,
they can recover rapidly because relatively little poisoning by siliciclastics
takes place during fair-weather conditions. Examples of this relationship
may occur on the inner shelf of Venezuela (Weiss et al., 1978) and on
some sea-marginal fans of the Red Sea (Friedman, 1982; Roberts and
Murray, 1983).
Mixing of sediments by rare, high-intensity events is termed
punctuated mixing here. It is difficult to document this type of mixing in
the modern sediments because of the present level of understanding of
storm processes and the difficulties inherent in observation. In contrast,
storm deposits of mixed composition are well known from the rock record. Most of them reflect sedimentation in subtidal environments that
were below normal or fair-weather wave base. The texture and composition of the sediments are controlled both by the type of material that is
delivered by storm flows and by the "background" sediment that accumulates relatively continuously. In his work on late Precambrian storm
deposits of southern Norway, Tucker (1982) demonstrated that the
background sedimentation in deeper subtidal environments consisted
primarily of carbonate mud. Fine-grained quartz sands were transported
from the nearshore into this environment by storm surges. These surges
eroded and entrained the carbonate and eventually deposited it with the
quartz sands in mixed, graded beds. Studies of Paleozoic shelf deposits by
GEOLOGY, July 1984

Selected Examples

Kelling and Mullin (1975) and Markello and Read (1981) demonstrate
that shallow-water carbonate environments can also act as a clastic
source for punctuated mixing. Their work documented the storm delivery
of bioclastic and quartz sands into subtidal environments that were below
fair-weather wave base. The storm flows interstratified and mixed these
sediments with terrigenous mud and calcisiltite background sediment,
eventually producing a deposit of complex composition.
Facies Mixing
In application of Walther's Law, it might be anticipated that, within
a vertical succession, mixed sediments would be found that form a record
of the gradational lateral transition between carbonate and siliciclastic
facies. Although not reported in great abundance, several modern and
ancient examples of this ideal case occur. The spectrum of environments
in which "facies mixing" occurs is broad. These environments include
fore-reef, back-reef, and inter-reef settings of reef tracts (Lewis, 1969;
Milliman and Summerhayes, 1975), the flanks of carbonate shoal complexes that shelter siliciclastic lagoons (Selley, 1969), where tidal flats
and nearshore siliciclastic belts interfinger with deeper subtidal carbonates (Maxwell and Swinchatt, 1970), and in coastal dunes and tidal
flats that receive eolian contributions of contrasting sediment type
(Shinn, 1973).
However, review of the literature assembled for this study indicates
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that the stratigraphic contacts between major siliciclastic and carbonate

lithofacies are usually sharp; the gradational contact, predicted by
Walther's Law, appears to be the exception. The paucity of gradational
contacts may be due to two facets of shelf deposition: (1) Facies changes
may have taken place through a fundamental alteration in depositional
conditions on the shelf, involving either rapid migration of environments
or erosion (for example, the Quaternary record of the Belize shelf; Choi
and Ginsburg, 1982). (2) The lateral transition between coexisting carbonate and siliciclastic environments was very abrupt and thus not likely
to be preserved as a mixed sediment (as seen in modern sediments of the
east coast of Nicaragua; Murray et al., 1983). Therefore, in light of their
scarcity, sediments produced by facies mixing are important to focus on
because they provide a rare record of the interaction between contrasting
facies during their lateral migration (Ball, 1983).
In Situ Mixing
In most siliciclastic shelf environments there is relatively continuous
production of some carbonate sediment. The carbonate is derived
primarily from the autochthonous or parautochthonous death assemblages of calcareous organisms. The formation of mixed sediments
through this process is termed in situ mixing because it involves the local
formation of mixed sediment, rather than lateral transfer from one facies
to another.
In situ mixing occurs most commonly in subtidal, terrigenous
mud-dominated environments. In these settings organisms such as
molluscs, foraminifera, bryozoans, brachiopods, echinoderms, and calcareous algae are incorporated and mixed with terrigenous mud by the
action of burrowing organisms and weak tidal or oceanic currents.
Stronger currents can act to hydraulically segregate the mud from the
coarser skeletal grains, producing discrete shell lags that contain little or
no siliciclastic material. The English Channel, for example, contains both
muddy, in situ mixed sediments and bioclastic sands that are a product
of winnowing by tide and wave currents (Larsonneur et al., 1982).
Algal mats and algal stromatolites also contribute to in situ mixing.
The ability of the algae to locally produce calcium carbonate as well as
trap and bind clastic material leads to the formation of mixed sediments
in shallow subtidal and intertidal environments. Additionally, the inorganic precipitation of carbonate cements and partial lithification of subtidal and intertidal sediments may lead to the local formation of mixed
sediments. Erosion and reworking of these sediments produce carbonaterich intraclasts or intraformational conglomerates with a siliciclastic
matrix (Sepkoski, 1982).
Bioturbation of sediments on many shelves is acting to mix modern
sediments with relict sediments of contrasting composition (Swift et al.,
1971). This form of in situ mixing, when preserved in the rock record, is
probably difficult to distinguish from the mixing of sediments deposited
contemporaneously.
Source Mixing
Occasionally, the uplift and erosion of lithified carbonate terranes
will supply abundant clastic carbonate to shelf depositional systems that
would otherwise be dominated by siliciclastic sediments. In source mixing the admixed carbonate reflects nothing of the paleoecological conditions of the shelf. Instead, it is only a product of the composition of the
source terrane and the effects of erosion, transportation, and deposition.
An example of this occurs in marginal mari ne deposits of the Mesozoic
Gabriani Formation of eastern Greece (Price, 1977). Mixed clastic material was derived from nearby tectonically active source terranes that
contained metamorphic basement, quartz arenites, and shallow-marine
limestones.
TEXTURE A N D COMPOSITION OF MIXED SEDIMENTS
With the exception of source mixing, the controls on the texture of
mixed sediments are more complex than those for pure sediments. Hy434

draulic sorting and the type of siliciclastic supply remain a principal

control. However, as with pure carbonate sediments, the ecology and
productivity of carbonate-secreting organisms will also influence texture.
This is especially true of in situ mixing, where the burrowing activity of
infauna produces bimodally sorted sediments consisting of coarse skeletal
fragments floating in terrigenous muds. The impact of organisms is least
important in punctuated mixing and source mixing, where energetic
hydraulic processes act to sort and abrade carbonate clasts. In facies
mixing, the importance of organisms is variable, depending upon the
type of facies that are interacting.
The ecologies of the organisms will also be reflected in the skeletal
composition of mixed sediments. The work of Lees and Buller (1972)
and Lees (1975) showed that modern carbonates occurring between the
equator and lat 60 can be grouped into three principal categories according to their skeletal fraction: (1) a chlorozoan assemblage, dominated
by green algae and corals; (2) a chloralgal assemblage, composed mostly
of green algae; and (3) a foramol assemblage, consisting mainly of
foraminifera and molluscs. Their work documented that salinity and
temperature were the principal controls on the occurrence of these assemblages. The chlorozoan assemblage is restricted to areas of moderate
salinity and warm temperature, the chloralgal assemblage occurs in
waters of high salinity and warm temperature, and the foramol assemblage occurs in a broad range of temperatures and salinities.
Variations in salinity and temperature doubtless play an important
role in the allochem composition of mixed sediments, especially for those
that form in temperate waters or in restricted environments. In contrast,
where normal marine conditions prevail in tropical waters, the composition of the mixed sediments is probably controlled by the nature of the
mixing process. Because reefs occur on siliciclastic substrates (Hubbard,
1982; Ginsburg et al., 1983), sediments typically associated with reefs
(i.e., the chlorozoan assemblage) will inevitably be incorporated as part
of mixed sediments. However, the literature reviewed for this paper indicates that the skeletal assemblage that most commonly occurs in mixed
sediments is the foramol or foramol-like assemblage. Chlorozoan and
chloralgal assemblages are much rarer. This may indicate that the inhibiting effects of increased turbidity, unstable substrates, and the clogging of feeding mechanisms select against the more terrigenous-sensitive
chlorozoan and chloralgal assemblages and in favor of the more tolerant
foramol assemblage. This appears to be the case for all types of mixing
processes, although sediments produced by punctuated mixing show the
highest proportion of chlorozoan components and those produced by in
situ mixing show the lowest.
CONCLUSIONS
The occurrence of mixed carbonate and siliciclastic sediment appears to be quite common in both modern and ancient deposits. In this
generalized survey I have attempted to show that mixed sediments are
generated by rare storms, by mixing along the margins of contrasting
facies, through the in situ accumulation of calcareous organisms, and by
the uplift and erosion of carbonate source terranes. This list is not intended to be all-inclusive or exclusive; mixed sediments may have formed
by combinations of these processes or by processes not recognized here.
The previous lack of attention to this type of sediment is puzzling.
Perhaps the concentration of research efforts on isolated platforms like
the Bahamas has diverted attention from shelves that have a nearby
source of siliciclastic material. In addition, Holocene changes in sea level
and the associated disequilibrium of many siliciclastic-influenced carbonate shelves (Ginsburg and James, 1974) may have led some workers
to regard the abundant mixed sediments of modern shelves as simply
anomalous and not important for the study of the rock record. Whatever
the cause, the diversity and widespread occurrence of modern and
ancient mixed sediments will probably re veal important information
about the dynamics of shelf facies and their response to changes in sea
level, sedimentation rates and regional subsidence (see discussions of
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Kendall and Schlager, 1981; Walker et al., 1983). Additionally, the
characteristics of carbonate platforms have certainly changed with the
evolution of various calcareous taxa (Wilson, 1974; Read, 1982; James
and Mountjoy, 1983). Have the evolving calcareous biota produced a
corresponding evolution of mixed sediments? For example, are Proterozoic and Phanerozoic mixed sediments equally distributed, and did mixing take place in the same ways and in the same environments? Perhaps
the analysis of the texture and composition of mixed sediments, as well
as their temporal and spatial distribution, may be an important tool in
both paleoecologic and paleoenvironmental studies of ancient shelf
sequences.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Research supported by American Chemical Society PRF Grant 13360-G2
and National Science Foundation Grant EAR-8212375.1 thank Jennifer Dienger
for helping to accumulate the basic data for this study and for reviewing the
manuscript, Stephen Rowland and Debra Gevirtzman for their suggestions, and
Johnnie N. Moore and Gerald Friedman for especially helpful reviews.
Manuscript received November 29, 1983
Revised manuscript received March 6, 1984
Manuscript accepted March 13, 1984

Printed in U.S.A.

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Geology
Mixing of siliciclastic and carbonate sediments in shallow shelf environments
Jeffrey F. Mount
Geology 1984;12;432-435
doi: 10.1130/0091-7613(1984)12<432:MOSACS>2.0.CO;2

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Notes

Geological Society of America