March 2024

Soon to be published: Fantle and Lloyd (2024) Demystifying Diagenesis: The Future of Diagenetic Inquiry in the Geosciences

Be on the lookout for the Treatise on Geochemistry (Elsevier) chapter by Matthew S. Fantle and Max Lloyd in 2024. Accompanying the chapter will be an online repository (scholarsphere.psu.edu) in which you will find a ton of useful information and links. Amongst the latter are URLs for model interfaces that anyone can use to explore diagenesis in a quantitative manner.

The abstract:

Diagenesis encompasses all physical, chemical, mineralogical changes that a sediment, rock, molecule, or mineral undergoes following deposition. Because the time that geologic materials spend in the diagenetic realm is substantial relative to the time spent in the formational environment, there is potential for primary materials to be altered diagenetically. Despite its importance, diagenesis is a difficult and complicated topic to discuss. In this contribution, we demonstrate the use of a range of quantitative tools, from mixing equations to reactive transport models, in order to facilitate discussions of diagenesis. We consider simple models of 𝐶𝑎𝐶𝑂3 recrystallization and dolomitization that are applicable to both shallow and deep-sea marine sediments, highlight key controls on diagenetic trajectories, present a compilation of partition coefficients for 𝐶𝑎𝐶𝑂3 and clays, and discuss model illustrations of the diagenetic generation/modification, of carbon, calcium, and lithium isotopic records in the marine sedimentary section.