Provenance of Arenites

Gian Gaspare Zuffa Dipartimento di Scienze della Terra Universitä della Calabria 87030 Castiglione Cosentino Stazione, Cosenza, ITALY The tradition has been to consider Sedimentology and Sedimen­ tary Petrology as quite separate areas of research. It is however impossible to arrive at an optimal description of sedimentary rocks without integrating the two fields since sedimentary processes and compositional aspects are strongly intertwined. The study of arenites is of particular importance in obtaining paleogeographic and paleotectonic reconstructions aimed at deter­ mining the geodynamics of the earth's crust. It also has important implications in exploration for and exploitation of hydrocarbons. At the NATO ASI Meeting on Reading Provenance from Arenites held in Calabria (Italy), June 3-ll, 1984, field sedimentologists and sedimentary petrologists were given opportunity to pool their resources in order to obtain better analyses of both source areas and depositional basins. The papers collected in this volume represent an edited ver­ sion of the lectures given and provide a comprehensive picture of the present state of the art since they include such important top­ ics as: l) the climate and relief of the source areas, 2) mechani­ cal transport of sediments and depositional processes, 3) postdep­ ositional processes, and 4) the methodology adopted for petrogra­ phic optical analyses. Particular attention has been paid to the limitations and errors introduced into paleogeographic and paleo­ tectonic reconstructions by incomplete and incorrect data.