Depositional environment of sediments along the Cuddalore coast of Tamilnadu, India.

Abstract

Surficial sediments of beaches along the Cuddalore, central coast of Tamilnadu from Ponnaiyar estuarine to Thirumulaivasal were studied for their textural parameters namely Mean (Grain size) phi, Standard deviation, Skweness and Kurtosis and mineral percentages. Observed variation of energy conditions are controlled by the fluvial profile in the river channel. Textural analysis of medium sand shows the existence of comparatively high energy condition in the marine environment and low energy conditions in the fluvial zone. Linear Discriminant Function (LDF) analysis of the samples indicates a shallow marine environment origin for most of the samples and very few numbers of samples originated from fluvial environment. Heavy mineral content serves as an index for stratigraphic correlation of unfossilferrous strata. The lowest heavy mineral content indicates progradational activity and low energy wave conditions. These results show that reworked sediments, submerged during the Holocene marine transgression are being deposited on present day beaches by waves, currents and rivers in the study region.