Home – Home – Jornals – Russian Geology and Geophysics 2009 number 2

We consider the general and specific features of the evolution of the composition of fine-grained terrigenous rocks in the Riphean sedimentary megasequences of the Southern Urals, Uchur-Maya region, and Yenisei Ridge. It has been established that the crust on the southwestern (in the modern frame of references) periphery of the Siberian craton was geochemically the most mature segment of the Riphean continental crust. For example, the fine-grained clastic rocks and metapelites of all Riphean lithostratigraphic units of the Yenisei Ridge have higher median contents of Th than the most mature Paleoproterozoic crust, and in median contents of Y and Cr/Th values they are the most similar to it. In the Southern Urals and Uchur-Maya region, some units of the Riphean sedimentary sequences show median contents of Y and Th and Cr/Th values close to those of primitive Archean crust. Analysis of Cr/Th variations in the fine-grained terrigenous rocks of all three megasequences shows that the minimum Cr/Th values, evidencing a predominance or the abundance of felsic rocks in provenances, are typical of the Riphean argillaceous shales and metapelites of the Yenisei Ridge. The distinct Cr/Th and Cr/Sc increase in the fine-grained clastic rocks of the Chingasan Group of the ridge reflects the large-scale destruction of continental crust during the formation of rift troughs as a result of the Rodinia breakup in the second half of the Late Riphean. The Cr/Th variations in the Lower and Middle Riphean argillaceous shales and mudstones of the Bashkirian mega-anticlinorium and Uchur-Maya region are in agreement, which evidences the subglobal occurrence of rifting in the early Middle Riphean (so-called

Approaches to the construction of thermodynamic models for sorption of trace-element cations on carbonates are considered. To calculate thermodynamic equilibria by the method of Gibbs free-energy minimization, the existing database of reaction constants and thermodynamic potentials was extended. Different types of models are illustrated by the example of precipitation of Cd, Cu, Pb, and Zn from the water of a drainage stream flowing out of the impoundment of barite-polymetallic ore-dressing wastes. It is shown that the mobility of metals in such cases can be controlled by their sorption by calcite present in bottom sediments and suspension. Any approach can be successfully applied to both the modeling of experimental data on cation sorption and the prediction of the ecologo-geochemical situation in the districts of dressing works.

Density sections of the Upper Proterozoic-Paleozoic cis-Yenisei sedimentary basin were numerically modeled to show that the gravity mechanism was sufficient to bring about linear deformation structures. The main conditions of their formation and development have been determined. Comparative analysis of the results of modeling with variations in initial parameters shows an important role of dolomite interbeds in the formation of structures in the section of Cambrian evaporates. The specific evolution of the structures was related to the specific basin sedimentation and the subsequent tectonic evolution of the region as a whole. The conclusion has been drawn that the tectonic influence of neighboring folded zones might have triggered salt tectogenesis.

The Altai lithospheric structure has been generally understood due to available high-resolution digital models. As a further step in modeling, we have simulated the structure of southeastern Altai as interaction of eight blocks which comprise or surround the Chuya and Kurai basins, proceeding from the basic configuration of blocks and earthquake mechanisms. Should the stresses in the system remain invariable, the western periphery of the Kurai basin will deform to let the Uimen-Sumulta fault join the Chuya (western end of Tolbonur) fault and evolve further as a single shear zone. The best fit model was one with slip along a single border fault in the middle of the area between two rheologically different terranes. This setting corresponds to a fault boundary between the more plastic Gorny Altai and more rigid Teletskoe-Chulyshman domains, which is consistent with current crustal movements from GPS data. In addition to scientific significance, models of this kind have practical applications as they highlight areas of stress buildup prone to release in large earthquakes. The new approach was applied to simulate the stress and strain patterns of central and southeastern Gorny Altai, and the models were tested against available geomorphological and seismotectonic data.

Years-long data series of Earth's natural pulse electromagnetic fields (EPEMF) from the Talaya station near Lake Baikal indicates their mainly terrestrial origin and includes a component of poorly understood stable diurnal and annual crustal rhythms. The short-period crustal motion may drive mechanic-to-electric conversion in rocks and be responsible for diurnal and annual VLF electromagnetic pulses.
The lithospheric rather than atmospheric origin of many recorded EPEMF signals is supported by their links with nucleation of earthquakes and respective perfect match of the EPEMF and seismicity diurnal patterns. Joint spectral analysis of the Talaya EPEMF and seismicity time series and comparison with the known spectra of lunar and solar tides shows no direct correlation between the short-period rhythms and the gravitation effects.
We suggest that the diurnal and annual EPEMF periodicity may be associated with differential motion of the core and lithosphere and use this hypothesis to model an annual core path. As the model predicts, the inner solid core is never at the Earth's geometric center but moves relative to the latter along a closed orbit; the plane of the core orbit is normal to the equatorial plane and tilted 45

We have applied the method of one temperature log suggested by Kutasov in 1987 to process an unsteady temperature log of the 674 m deep submarine borehole BDP-98-2 (Akademichesky Ridge, Lake Baikal) and found it suitable to reconstruct the primary steady thermal gradient not disturbed by drilling. The steady gradient we derived using a special formalism, with reference to drilling conditions and measured thermal properties of sediments, was 63 mK/m, more than two times the unsteady gradient at different depths. Heat flow calculated with this gradient and a mean thermal conductivity of 1.1 W/(m·K) was 70 mW/m², which is consistent with earlier geothermal data from the same area. Thus, the one-log procedure is a useful tool to predict the original undisturbed thermal gradients and estimate approximate heat flows if a single unsteady temperature log is available.

A numerical experiment was applied to explore the potentialities and limitations of joint inversion of IP-affected transients measured with different loop configurations above a uniform half-space with a Cole-Cole complex conductivity. One of us calculated 200 m × 50 m and 50 m × 50 m loop responses of a uniform polarizable conductor with varied Cole-Cole parameters and imposed synthetic Gaussian noise that simulated measurement errors. Then the generated pseudo-experimental data passed to the other co-author who performed single and joint 1D inversion twice: first being unaware of the

The concepts of the role of catastrophic breakthroughs of ice- and rock-dammed and thermokarst lakes in West Siberia in the Late Neopleistocene-Holocene are systematized. The Late Neopleistocene glacial maximum in the mountains and on the plain was obviously at the same time, at 90-60 ka. It has been revealed that the basal part of the Late Quaternary cyclic three-stage upper Ob' River terrace is formed by catafluvial sediments including boulder-gravels, which descend from the valley edge beneath the water line. The Early Karginian (Kharsoimian) marine layers are spatially related to the valleys of the rushed waters of ice-dammed Lake Ermakovskoe. Substantiation is given to the concept of catastrophic flows that arrived at the plain from the Pamir and Tien Shan mountains in the Holocene Optimum and carried the Aral microfauna through the Turgai trough into the Lake Chany area. Floods resulted from the breakthrough of thermokarst lakes in the north of the West Siberian plain were typical in Karginian and Holocene time. The breakthroughs of moraine-dammed basins in the Altai Mountains took place mainly in Karginian time, whereas the breakthroughs of rock-dammed lakes, in the Sartan and Holocene epochs.