Marine Authigenesis , a Holistic Approach

This book is a collection of papers focusing on various aspects of authigenic and diagenetic marine minerals and related elemental cycling. In essence, it belongs to a line of specialized volumes marking major steps of continued international cooperation. Closely following the establishment of UNESCO International Geological Correlation Programme (IGCP) Project 156 (Phosphorites) in 1978, SEPM Special Publication 29 (Marine Phosphorites, edited by Y. K. Bentor) was published in 1980 as a collection of stimulating papers stemming from a symposium on marine phosphorites held at the Xth International Congress on Sedimentology in Jerusalem in July 1978. Nearly simultaneously, a thematic set of special papers on “Phosphatic and Glauconitic Sediments” was published by the Journal of the Geological Society (Volume 137, 1980) following a meeting of the Geological Society on the same subject earlier that year. Led by P. J. Cook and J. H. Shergold (1978-1984) and later by W. C. Burnett and S. R. Riggs (1984-1988), IGCP Project 156 conducted 29 international and regional field workshops and symposia. Over the next two decades, a flourishing of international research on phosphorites and their related facies ensued, with many workers attempting to solve the many “Unsolved Problems” outlined by Bentor (1980) in his seminal introduction to SEPM Special Publication 29. A great deal of this research was submitted for Special Publication 52 of the Journal of the Geological Society of London, published in 1990, and edited by A. Notholt and I. Jarvis, who organized the final International Symposium of UNESCO Project 156 in Oxford in 1988. In 1991, a successor UNESCO IGCP Project 325 titled “Correlation of Paleogeography with Phosphorites and Associated Authigenic Minerals” was initiated by J. Lucas and L. Prévôt. The title of this research group clearly illustrates the increasing desire of its researchers at that time to expand the scope of the project to the study of the origin and occurrence of other authigenic minerals. In addition to a myriad of independent publications, a number of other important books were published in association with the IGCP Projects during this period. These included a three-volume set of 151 papers published by Cambridge University Press titled “Phosphate Deposits of the World,” including Vol. 1 — Proterozoic and Cambrian Phosphorites (Cook and Shergold, 1986), Vol. 2 — Phosphate Rock Resources (Notholt et al., 1989), and Vol. 3 — Neogene to Modern Phosphorites (Burnett and Riggs, 1990). Also published during this time frame were special thematic publications of Sciences Géologiques (Lucas and Prevôt, 1979, 1985; Lucas et al., 1989). Later, Siliceous, Phosphatic and Glauconitic Sediments of the Tertiary and Mesozoic (Iijima et al., 1994) was published following a symposium of the International Geological Congress in Japan in 1992. In 1993, members of IGCP Project 325 met in Interlaken for a meeting and workshop to discuss concepts and controversies that continued to surround the origin of marine phosphorites and this resulted in a multi-authored set of papers published in Eclogae geologicae Helvetiae (Föllmi, 1994). The present volume contains many papers which were either presented at the final symposium and workshop of UNESCO Project IGCP 325 (led by J. Lucas and L. Prevôt-Lucas) titled “Deposystems of Phosphorites and Related Authigenic Minerals: Processes, Pathways and Products” in Strasbourg (October, 1996), or at the first symposium of its successor, the SEPM Research Group on Marine Authigenesis (convened by C. R. Glenn & W. C. Burnett) titled “Formation of Authigenic Marine Minerals,” in Kona, Hawaii (May 1997). As with related predecessor volumes, this special publication contains a number of papers still searching for answers relating to the origin of marine phosphorites, including several papers relating to the biogeochemical cycling of phosphorus, yet it also contains a number of papers that discuss many other aspects of marine authigenic mineralization. The commingling of the various studies of authigenic minerals is partly the result of the increasing awareness that there are many overlaps, even direct associations, between different authigenic minerals, both in time and space. In compiling this volume we have taken the “holistic” attitude towards marine authigenesis, which considers the integrated whole to be more than the simple sum of its parts.