Trend Surfaces: Their Application to Analysis and Description of Environments of Sedimentation

The problem of defining and analyzing contemporary environments of sedimentation is approached from the point of view of mapping "trend surfaces." In this way an objective, continuous pattern which avoids unrealistic definite boundaries can be established for each measurable property of an environment of sedimentation. A second, closely related, problem also considered is to examine measurable properties which will pass through the time-diagenetic zone unchanged in a statistical sense, in order to ascertain how much can be inferred about strictly contemporary properties. Application is made to the near-shore area off La Jolla, California, and good agreement is found between local wave-and-current systems and sorting. An appendix describes the method in detail.