ALBERT

Description / Table of Contents: INTRODUCTION Over the past 18 years the author and several colleagues have developed a mathematical model designed to predict the propagation characteristics of acoustic waves in marine sediments. The model is based on the classical work of Maurice Biot who developed a comprehensive theory for the mechanics of porous, deformable media in a series of papers spanning the time period from 1941 to 1973. Since our objective was to develop a practical working model that could be used as a guide in planning and interpreting experimental work, we began with the simplest possible form of the model and added various complexities only as they were needed to explain new variations in the data that were obtained. Thus the number of material parameters that had to be measured or assumed at any stage in the development of the model was kept to a minimum. Since the first version of the model was introduced in 1970, we have published over twenty technical papers covering various stages of its development and many papers have been published by colleagues who have utilized our work in various ways. This monograph is an attempt to summarize the development and use of the model to date. Acoustic waves in ocean sediments may be considered as a limiting case in the more general category of mechanical waves that can propagate in fluid-saturated porous media. The general problem of wave motion in this kind of material has been studied extensively over the past thirty years by engineers, geophysicists and acousticians for a variety of reasons. In some cases, interest is focused on low-frequency waves of rather large amplitude, such as those that arise near the source of an earthquake or near a building housing heavy, vibrating machinery. At other times, the main interest is in waves of low frequency and amplitude that have traversed long distances through the sediment. In still another category, high-frequency waves that are able to resolve thin layering and other fine structural details are of interest in studying near-bottom sediments. Thus the full spread of frequency and amplitude has been studied for geological materials ranging from soft, unconsolidated sediments to rock. Because of the almost limitless combinations of different types of sediment, stratification and structure, accurate mathematical description of the wave field produced by a particular source can be constructed only if accurate descriptions of the acoustic properties of individual components can be specified. These properties depend on the geological history of the sediment deposit, on the frequency content of the wave field and on a number of other factors that depend on the environment in situ. A survey of the literature suggests that there are a number of parameters that play principal roles in controlling the dynamic response of saturated sediments...

Description / Table of Contents: PREFACE It is to-day generally recognized by environmental scientists that the particular behaviour of trace metals in the environment is determined by their specific physico-chemical forms rather than by their total concentration. With the introduction, several years ago, of atomic absorption spectrometry at many laboratories involved in environmental studies, a technique for simple, rapid and cheap determination of total metal concentrations in environmental samples became available. As a consequence, there is a plethora of scientific papers and reports where metal concentrations in the environment are only reported as total concentrations. It appears that the simplicity of making accurate determinations of total metal contents in water, sediment and biological samples has somewhat masked the need for improved knowledge about the various forms of metals occurring in the environment as well as the bioavailahility of these forms. In other words, the need for metal speciation in studies of metals in the environment does not seem to have become obvious to most environmental scientists until relatively recently. As a matter of fact, it was only in the middle of the 1970s that the first systematic attempts were made to obtain information about the various metal species occurring in environmental samples. During the last ten years, however, a revolutionary change of attitude towards the importance of metal speciation has occurred and considerable research effort has been devoted by environmental scientists to measuring the concentrations of biologically important trace metals in surface waters. There is currently an increasing effort to couple the development of chemical analytical techniques to process-related biological problems. Concurrently, a new focus is being imposed on ecological impact studies, that of determining which active trace metal species merit the most intensive research from the standpoint of environmental perturbation. Current efforts are directed towards the development of chemical speciation schemes which can be related directly to measures of bioavailability...

Description / Table of Contents: PREFACE It was only during the last few years, that the geological effects of storms and hurricanes in shallow-marine environments have been better appreciated. Not only were storm deposits recognized to dominate many shelf sequences, they also proved to be valuable tools in facies and paleogeographical analysis. Additionally, storm layers form important hydrocarbon reservoirs. Storm-generated sequences are now reasonably mell documented in terms of their facies associations in the stratigraphic record. Much less is known, however, about the effects and the depositional processes of modern storms, and about the styles of storm sedimentation on basinwide scales. Accordingly, the goal of this study is two-fold: 1. it presents two case studies of modern carbonate and terrigenous clastics storm sedimentatioq. The models derived from these actualistic examples can be used to interprete possible ancient analogues. 2. it presents a comprehensive analysis of an ancient storm depositional system (Muschelkalk) on a basin-wide scale. The underlying approach of this study is a process-oriented analysis of sedimentary sequences, an approach that ~as summarized by Matthews (1974, 1984) as "dynamic stratigraphy". The integration of actualistic models with a "dynamic" stratigraphic analysis helps to understand the dynamics of storm depositional systems; these models have a potential to be applied to other basins and to predict the facies organisation and the facies evolution in such systems...

Description / Table of Contents: The aim of this volume is to reflect the current state of geoscientific activity focused on the geodynamic evolution of the Atlas system and to discuss new results and ideas. The volume provides a selection of papers on the geological history, structural development, and geophysical data of Morocco. It was not possible to cover all areas of geoscientific interest, however, we hope to shed some light on the major geodynamic problems.

Description / Table of Contents: PREFACE During the last few years, evaporites have increasingly been regarded as sediments and not only as chemical precipitates. Especially the intensive study of the Zechstein facies has resulted in a vast amount of observations and interpretations which are of general significance, offering important information to all sedimentologists interested in carbonates and evaporites. It seems therefore useful to introduce the sedimentological approach in a basin where various chemical concepts have been developed. This is the aim of the present volume, and this approach will be recognized by the reader in most of the chapters. The idea of publishing a collection of papers on the Zechstein facies and related rocks found an enthusiastic response, although later some contributors were, for various reasons, unable to meet the deadline. However, the papers submitted cover all major fields and will certainly stimulate further research...

Description / Table of Contents: PREFACE The Lower Triassic Buntsandstein in Middle Europe which originated in mainly continental fluvla] environment in the Mid-European Triassic Basin is a famous terrestrial red bed sequence that is discussed in the geological literature since more than 200 years. Much of the earlier work had been devoted to stratigraphical, palaeogeographical and petrographical problemsof the Buntsandstein. The sedimentological analysis and deposltional modelling in the German-type facies, however, is the youngest branch of Buntsandstein investigation and started only a few decades ago. During the last ten years when I began to concentrate on the interpretation of the genesis of the Buntsandstein, much work has been carried out and has already been documented in numerous papers that focussed on various aspects of sedimentology, particularly on reconstruction of fluvial and aeolian depositional mechanisms, significance of palaeosols, importance of fluvial conglomerates, palaeoecology of the fossils, interdisciplinary sedimentology, diagenesis of heavy minerals and origin of the red colour. A summary of the present knowledge in the western part of the German Basin is given in a compilation of regional articles together with general discussions and comparative contributions and especially with an extensive colour photographic documentation in an earlier book (reference on p. 12). In the last few years when more and more material became available not only from the Buntsandstein s. str. (Lower Triassic Scythian) in the Mid-European Triassic Basin, but also from correlative sequences in adjoining areas and even older or younger series of similar facies and origin, it became more and more evident that a synthesis of the state of the art would be necessary, if not inevitably for outlining the general frame and illustrating the diversification of facies associations in numerous temporal and spatial scales. That is why I decided to edit an international proceedings volume on the Buntsandstein which is to compile contributions from many regions and different stratigraphic units with emphasis on various aspects of fluvia] sedi~ntation, but stressing also the importance of the distribution of associated environments such as aeolian dunes and calcrete palaeosols. In spite of my own enthusiasm for the Buntsandstein continental red bed formation (the Lower Triassic red rocks seem to have a very special flavour for being so attractive for me) and regardless of the expansion of my investigations from my original Eife] area (where I learnt how to assess the facies assoCiations in terms of depositional modelling and where I collected an enormous amount of data that served as a valuable base for the production of various case studies which were published during the last years) to several other regions, it was without any doubt that it would not be possible for me alone to finish such an overregional proceedings book within a reasonable time, but that I had to beg various colleagues for their collaboration by writing papers on the Buntsandstein in their investigated areas for this volume. Although the response to my first and second circulars soon showed that it would not be possible to publish a compilation of articles from almost all the studied regions, formations and aspects within a reasonable time with avoiding too much delay of appearance for early contributors, I am very happy that finally many colleagues provided me with papers from almost all the countries in Europe where Buntsandstein is cropping out at the surface. In spite of the tremendous editorial work which was necessary to polish the English, to improve the contents of text and drawings and to put the sequence of papers into a general stream line, I would like to thank all my colleagues who contributed to this volume for their support of the project and particularly for their understanding of my editorial task, especially in case of my frequently serious intervention into their early manuscripts and illustrations. Looking for a publisher in the early stages of planning the volume, I found immediately support by Dr. W. Engel (Department of Geological Sciences of the Springer- Verlag) who generously offered me to take the book into the newly founded series "Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences". From the beginning of organization, writing and editing, I appreciated very much the close cooperation with Dr. Engel who always had an ear for my problems and gave me the necessary freedom to finish the volume along the lines of my intention. Although the preparation of the camera-ready manuscript leaves nearly all the work and responsibility with the author, I am especially grateful to Dr. Engel for his guarantee of almost immediate publication after receipt of the final manuscript which allowed me to polish and incorporate latest ideas up to the very terminal moment. Writing on a subject like the Buntsandstein which has proven to be considerably diversified in terms of sedimentary processes and depositional mechanisms, it became soon apparent that a full discussion along my original intention would easily end up with several thousands of pages in size and would consume much more than a few years. Having already rePeatedly experienced in the past that during course of incorporation of nearly all the relevant literature, the reference l i s t of the final paper is often longer than the whole first draft of the article after one or two years collection of data and ideas, there was no other way than to decide to keep the bibliography short. In order to restrict the book to an economical frame and not to frighten the readership to death, but especially to avoid drowning of the red line through the volume, many contributions had to be written as summary presentations without detailed discussion of the literature. Speaking particularly for the articles that have been written by myself either alone or together with friends, I can assure that this is by no means the result of proud neglectance of other works, but only the necessity of streamlining of the book, and that much of the detailed discussion of comparative examples from the literature has to be done in subsequent special papers. It is impossible to acRnowledge all the people that helped me to arrive at the present goal. Special merits, however, deserve those who stimulated my interest for the Buntsandstein. I am especially indebted to Prof. Dr. G. Fuchs (Landessammlungen fur Naturkunde, Karlsruhe) who proposed me ten years ago to work on the Eifel Buntsandstein for my M.Sc. Thesis, and who later supervised together with Prof. Dr. W. Dachroth (Department of Geology and Palaeontology, University of Heidelberg) the preparation of my Ph.D. Thesis. The good luck of the former to choose the Eifel for me as a starting region (which later proved to have a key position for approaching the evolution of fluvial sedimentation in many other Buntsandstein areas), and the earlier investigations of the latter (although largely unpublished and even only briefly touched in his contribution to this volume) triggered my love of the Buntsandstein which has reached a preliminary climax with the present book. It is my pleasure to dedicate this volume to my two former supervisors with very many thanks for their support and in honour of their merit to have lighted the fire. It is my sincere wish to acknowledge again all the people who contributed with articles to this volume for their help to prepare this summary of the state of the art of Buntsandstein fluvial sedimento]og~y. I also want to sincerely thank all friends and colleagues who supplied ideas and facts in oral or written form and who guided me in the field during course of my comparative investigations that helped me considerably in proceeding with the interpretation of the Buntsandstein. Thanks are also due to Helmut Mader (my father) and Martha Herrmann (my aunt) for their support. I am further indebted to those who have been involved in the various technical aspects of the preparation of the manuscript from the beginning of word processor typesetting of the text and reprography of the illustrations to the final printing. I do hope that the compilation of articles on fluvial aspects of the Buntsandstein in this book will stimulate the interest of many people in the topic of sedimentological modelling of terrestrial red bed sequences and will internationally highlight the position of the Buntsandstein as an extraordinarily attractive case history of fluvial deposition.

Description / Table of Contents: INTRODUCTION Evaporites may form in a spectrum of environments from continental sabkha (playa) to deep basins (see Kendall 1978 a, b, Schreiber 1978, 1986, Friedman and Krumbein 1985, for review). In the last two decades, many ancient evaporite basins have been interpreted using the sabkha model and the deep desiccated basin model, the former not excluding the latter. However, growing evidence has been gathered indicating that most evaporites are formed in subaqueous environments, so that it cannot be reasonably expected that one depositional model alone will explain the entire basin fill. The chapters in this volume discuss characteristic examples of evaporite basins, mostly of moderate size. Aspects of a saline giant, the Zechstein basin of Central and NW Europe, have been considered in Volume 10 of "Lecture Notes in Earth Sciences"...

Description / Table of Contents: PREFACE During the so-called Mid-Cretaceous interval, approximately 100 million years ago, the earth experienced a dynamic phase in its geologic history. Enhanced global tectonic activity resulted in a major rearrangment of the continental plates; accelerated spreading rates induced a first-order sea level highstand; intense off-ridge volcanism contributed to a modeled high atmospheric CO 2 rate; climatic conditions fluctuated; and major changes occurred in biologic evolutionary patterns. With the initiation of a gradual change from an equatorial, east-west directed current-circulation pattern to a regime, dominated by south-north and north-south directed current systems, the earth's internal clock was set for Cenozoic, "modern" times. The Mid-Cretaceous dynamic phase is recorded in a suite of sediments of remarkable similarity around the globe. Shallow-water carbonate platforms drowned on a global scale; widespread sediment-starved, glauconite and phosphate- rich sequences developed; and consequently, pelagic sedimentary regimes "invaded" shelf and epicontinental sea areas. This typical "deepening-upward" pattern is well-documented in Mid-Cretaceous sequences along the northern Tethys margin. Shallow-water carbonates are overlain by condensed glauconitic and phosphatic sediments, which, in turn, are blanketed by pelagic carbonates. In this volume, the example of the western Austrian helvetic Alps, built up of inner and outer shelf sediments deposited along the northern Tethys margin, is used to elucidate the paleoceanographic conditions, under which the Mid-Cretaceous triad of platform carbonates, condensed phosphatic and glauconitic sediments, and pelagic carbonates was formed. In the first part, the evolution of this sequence is traced from the demise of the platform (Aptian) to the return of detritus-dominated deposition (Upper Santonian). The second part includes a discussion of the reconstructed paleoceanographic and tectonic variables, their possible interaction, as well as their influence on sediment properties during this period. Special attention is paid to (1) subsidence behavior of the inner, platform-based shelf and the outer shelf beyond the platform, (2) ammonoid paleobiogeography, (3) the northern tethyan current system and its impact on sediment patterns, (4) the influence of an oxygen minimum zone, (5) sediment bypassing mechanisms on the inner shelf, (6) condensation processes, (7) phosphogenesis, (8) relative sea level changes, (9) genesis and the development of unconformities, (10) tectonic phases and their impact on sediment configuration, (11) drowning of the shallow-water carbonate platform, and (12) "asymmetric" sedimentary cycles. The detailed reconstruction of the development of sedimentary patterns both in time and space in this particular area, and its environmental interpretation, given in this volume, may serve as a contribution to a better understanding of the Mid-Cretaceous dynamic phase in earth's history...

Description / Table of Contents: INTRODUCTION Theoretical modelling and the use of mathematical methods are presently gaining in importance since progress in both geology and mathematics offers new possibilities to combine both fields. Most geological problems are inherently geometrical and morphological, and, therefore, amenable to a classification of forms from a "Gestalt point of view". Geometrical objects have to possess an inherent stability in order to preserve their essential quality under slight deformations. Otherwise, we could hardly conceive of them or describe them, and today's observation would not reproduce yesterday's result (DANGELMAYR & GÜTTINGER, 1982). This principle has become known as "structural stability" (THOM, 1975), i.e. the persistence of a phenomenon under all allowed perturbations. Stability is also, of course, an assumption of classical Newtonian physics, which is essentially the theory of various kinds of smooth behavior (POSTON &STEWART, 1978). However, things sometimes "jump". A new species with a different morphology appears suddenly in the paleontological record (EI.DREDGE & GOULD, 1972), a fault develops, a landslide moves, a computer program becomes unstable with a certain data configuration, etc. It is, surprisingly, the topological approach which permits the study of a broad range of such phenomena in a coherent manner (POSTON & STEWART, 1978; LU, 1976; STEWART, 1982). The universal singularities and bifurcation processes derived from the concept of structural stabiIity determine the spontaneous formation of qualitatively similar spatio-temporal structures in systems of various geneses exhibiting critical behavior (DANGELMAYR & GÜTTINGER, 1982; THOM, 1975; POSTON & STEWART, 1978; GÜTTINGER & EIKEMEIER, t979; STEWART, 1981). In addition, this return to a "geometrization of phenomena"-- after decades of algorithmization-- comes much closer to the geologist's intuitive geometric reasoning. It is the aim of this study to elucidate, by examples, how the qualitative geometrical approach allows one to classify forms and to control the behavior of complex computer algorithms...