Provenance control on chemical indices of weathering (Taiwan river sands)

Geochemical parameters obtained from the analysis of sediments and sedimentary rocks are widely used to infer weathering and paleo-weathering conditions in source areas. Chemical indices of weathering, however, may not reflect weathering only, or even principally. The concentration of chemical elements in terrigenous sediments is constrained by the original mineralogy of source rocks, and is thus provenance-dependent. Moreover, the mineralogy and consequently the geochemistry of sediments may undergo substantial modifications by diverse physical processes during transport and deposition, including recycling and hydraulic sorting by size, density or shape, and/or by chemical dissolution and precipitation during diagenesis.Around the island of Taiwan, temperature and rainfall are consistently high and relatively homogeneous, and no significant correlation is observed between geochemical and climatic parameters. Physical erosion, fostered by landslides induced by frequent earthquakes and typhoons, prevails because of high relief and extreme rates of tectonic uplift. In such a dynamic orogenic setting, all chemical indices of weathering are controlled principally by the geology of source terranes. Sedimentaclastic and metasedimentaclastic sands carried by western Taiwan rivers draining the pro-wedge display the strongest depletion in Na, Ca, Mg and Sr relative to average upper continental crust, and no depletion or even enrichment in K, Rb and Ba. Low WIP indices reflect erosion of phyllosilicate-dominated rocks in the Slate Belt and extensive recycling of clastic rocks exposed in the Western Foothills. Instead, metamorphiclastic sands carried by eastern Taiwan rivers draining the retro-wedge show no depletion or even enrichment in Mg and Ca, and low CIA and PIA, reflecting contributions from the Tailuko Belt and Coastal Range. Volcaniclastic sands have the same CIA values of their andesitic source rocks (47 ± 1 versus 47 ± 7), indicating that weathering is subordinate both along the eastern side of the island and at its northern edge where annual rainfall is double.Full caution is required when chemical weathering indices are used to extract climatic and paleoclimatic information from the sedimentary archive, especially in the case of diagenized sandstones where commonly massive precipitation of authigenic carbonate is very difficult to accurately correct for, especially in the absence of detailed petrographic and mineralogical data.