Sedimentological, mineralogical, and geochemical characterization of sand dunes in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

This paper investigates the morphology, texture, composition, mineralogy, and geochemistry, and provenance of sand dunes from 10 locations in Saudi Arabia. Morphologically, these sand dunes include linear, parallel to subparallel ridge, parabolic, barchans, and star sand dunes. Sixty-seven samples were collected from these different sand dune types. Generally, sands from dunes in all locations were characterized by fine to coarse mean grain size, were moderately sorted, and had near symmetrical skewness with mesokurtic distribution. Skewness and mesokurtic distribution characterize sand dunes in most locations except the Red Sea, Qassim, central Arabia, and the Eastern Province where sand dunes all show of subangular grains. The sand dunes are composed of quartz, feldspar, calcite, and mica. Quartz dominates the mineralogy of all sand dunes, although significant amounts of feldspars and mica are found in Najran, the Red Sea, and Central Arabia. While calcite is present in sand dunes at Sakaka and NW Rub' Al-Khali. Basement-related sand dunes at Najran (N1), central Arabia (C5), and the Red Sea are mineralogically submature. However, nonbasement sand dunes at other locations are mature. Both petrographic and geochemical analyses of sand dunes indicated that most sand dunes are classified as quartz arenite, except in the basement-related sand dunes at Najran (N1), central Arabia (C5), and the Red Sea, where they range from subarkose to litharenite. Moreover, major, trace, and rare earth elements indicated an active continental margin tectonic setting for sand dunes from the Red Sea, basementrelated Najran (N1), and central Arabia (C5) sand dunes, and passive continental margins for the other locations.

A Late Pleistocene Wetland Setting in the Arid Jurf ed Darawish Region in Central Jordan

“…In contrast to the loess deposits of the Negev Desert and the topsoil sediments of the Judean Mountains, the sediments of Section 9 have an additional third mode in the fine sand fraction which is comparable to aeolian sand deposits in the Arava/Araba Valley to the west of the central Jordanian Plateau or to dune sands in northeastern Saudi Arabia in its east (Saqqa and Atallah, 2004;Benaafi and Abdullatif, 2015; Figure 5). Thus, this coarser grain population probably represents locally derived aeolian sand.…”

Quartz Crystallinity Index of Arabian Sands and Sandstones

“…Provenance of Arabian sandstones and sands has been studied using petrographic, heavy-mineral, U-Pb zircon dating (Garzanti et al, 2013(Garzanti et al, , 2017, and geochemical methods (Benaafi & Abdullatif, 2015). Paleozoic sandstones (and Mesozoic, to lesser extent) have been suggested to be the main source of sand in the Nafud, Dahna, and the western part of AlRub'AlKhali deserts (Garzanti et al, 2013(Garzanti et al, , 2017.…”

Chemical and physical analysis of sandstone and relationship with weathering damage of Madâin Sâlih monuments

“…The values of d m were 336.32 μm for SR sample and 322.17; 283.91; 303.21 and 319.62 μm for SE, SN, SW and SS respectively. Studying sedimentological, mineralogical and geochemical characterization of sand dunes in Saudi Arabia, Benaafi and Abdullatif [19] reported that sand dunes from Tayma area (Not so far from Madâin Sâlih archeological area) showed the coarse mean grain size, the mean diameter is 250-350 μm. In Figure 5, we plotted on the y axis the cumulative percent passing and on the x axis the logarithmic sieve size.…”