Sand and Sandstone

Book excerpt: The first edition appeared fourteen years ago. Since then there have been significant advances in our science that warrant an updating and revision of Sand and Sandstone. The main framework of the first edition has been retained so that the reader can begin with the mineralogy and textural properties of sands and sandstones, progress through their organization and classification and their study as a body of rock, to consideration of their origin-prove nance, transportation, deposition, and lithification-and finally to their place in the stratigraphic column and the basin. The last decade has seen the rise of facies analysis based on a closer look at the stratigraphic record and the recognition of characteristic bed ding sequences that are the signatures of some geologic process-such as a prograding shallow-water delta or the migration of a point bar on an alluvial floodplain. The environment of sand deposition is more closely determined by its place in such depositional systems than by criteria based on textural characteristics-the "fingerprint" approach. Our revi sion reflects this change in thinking. As in the geological sciences as a whole, the concept of plate tectonics has required a rethinking of our older ideas about the origin and accumu lation of sediments-especially the nature of the sedimentary basins.