Journal of Earth Science & Climatic Change
Open Access

Research Article

Petrology and Alteration of Calcium Sulphate Deposits in Late Paleozoic Rocks of Wang Saphung Area, Loei Province, Thailand

Nusara S^1*, Punya C², Sarunya P and Ken-Ichiro H¹

¹Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan

²Department of Geology, Faculty of Science, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, 10330, Thailand

³Department of Geotechnology, Faculty of Technology, Khon Kaen University, Khon Kaen, 40002, Thailand

*Corresponding Author:

Nusara S
Graduate School of Life and Environmental
Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan
Tel: 6643362125
E-mail: nussan@kku.ac.th

Received date: December 22, 2016; Accepted date: January 23, 2017; Published date: January 30, 2017

Citation: Nusara S, Punya C, Sarunya P, Ken-Ichiro H (2017) Petrology and Alteration of Calcium Sulphate Deposits in Late Paleozoic Rocks of Wang Saphung Area, Loei Province, Thailand. J Earth Sci Clim Change 8:384. doi: 10.4172/2157-7617.1000384

Copyright: © 2017 Nusara S, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

The gypsum-anhydrite deposit in Loei-Wang Saphung (LWS) area of northeastern Thailand is a small evaporite sediment deposit with up to 50 m thick gypsum-anhydrite beds. The evaporite deposits are overlain by cross-laminated and fine-grained siliciclastic and carbonate rocks of the Carboniferous to Permian ages. This paper documents some characteristics of the deposits, including lithologies, textures, and structures of gypsum-anhydrite and associated rocks, based on the stratigraphic core logging of boreholes and lithofacies analysis of selected samples.

Morphological and textural mineralogical relationships reveal 10 textures of the evaporite formation viz. alabastrine gypsum, satin spar gypsum, selenite gypsum, gypsarenite, porphyroblastic gypsum, fine lenticular gypsum, crystalloblastic or blocky anhydrite, prismatic anhydrite, epigenetic anhydrite, and felty epigenetic anhydrite. The results also indicate that the LWS sulfate deposit has passed through at least 4 evolutionary alterations; (1) original precipitation as gypsum deposit, (2) gypsum-to-anhydrite transformation resulting from burial diagenesis in response to basinal subsidence, (3) rehydration of anhydrite-to-gypsum, indicated by distorted gypsum rocks, resulting from the increase of volume due to the rehydration from anhydrite to gypsum, and recrystallization of anhydrite and/or primary gypsum to secondary gypsum (4) uplift and re-expose of gypsum, indicated by the karstification and dissolution cavities and gypsarenite veins. The gypsum-anhydrite beds with associated carbonate and mud rocks suggest that these sedimentary sequences form in a subaqueous, probably shallow marine marginal setting during Late Carboniferous.

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