Highlights—Patterns in Rift Carbonates: It’s Their Fault

The nature of carbonate sedimentary systems of passive margins have been well documented, but patterns of carbonates in rifted settings are less systematically explored.  In this paper, Purkis et al. map and describe the spatial patterns of carbonate accumulation of reefal and other carbonates in the present-day Red Sea using Landsat data.  Patterns in these data reveal that fault lineaments direct the orientation of larger (> 5 km²) carbonate bodies, but that water depth is not the primary determinant on the occurrence or distribution of reefal framework versus sediment.  These data may provide insights into the orientation and scale of carbonate accumulations in ancient marine rift settings.

Patterns of sedimentation in the contemporary Red Sea as an analog for ancient carbonates in rift settings by Sam J. Purkis, Paul M. (Mitch) Harris, and James Ellis