Sedimentological analysis of resurge deposits at the Lockne and Tvären craters: Clues to flow dynamics

Abstract

The Lockne and Tvären craters formed about 455 million years ago in an epicontinental sea where seawater and mainly limestones covered a crystalline basement. The target water depth for Tvären (apparent basement crater diameter D = 2 km) was probably not over 150 m, and for Lockne (D = 7.5 km) recent best-fit numerical simulations suggest the target water depth of 500-700 m. Lockne has crystalline ejecta that partly cover an outer crater (14 km diameter) apparent in the target sediments. Tvären is eroded with only the crater infill preserved. We have line-logged cores through the resurge deposits within the craters in order to analyze the resurge flow. The focus was clast lithology, frequencies, and size sorting. We divide the resurge into resurge proper, with water and debris shooting into the crater and ultimately rising into a central water plume, anti-resurge, with flow outward from the collapsing plume, and oscillating resurge (not covered by the line-logging due to methodological reasons), with decreasing flow in diverse directions. At Lockne, the deposit of the resurge proper is coarse and moderately sorted, whereas the anti-resurge deposit is fining upwards and better sorted. The Tvären crater has a smoothly fining-up section deposited by the resurge proper and may lack anti-resurge deposits. At Lockne, the content of crystalline relative to limestone clasts generally decreases upwards, which is the opposite of Tvären. This may be a consequence of factors such as crater size (i.e., complex versus simple) and the relative target water depth. The mean grain size (i.e., the mean phi value per meter, phi) and standard deviation, i.e., size sorting (sigma) for both craters, can be expressed by the equation sigma = 0.60phi 1.25.